THE
CHRISTIAN
REMEMBRANCER
VOL. X.
JULY DECEMBER.
LONDON :
JAMES BURNS, 17, PORTMAN STREET,
PORTMAN SQUARE.
1845.
LONDON :
R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HIEL.
/ o
CONTENTS
OF
No. XLIX.
ART. I. Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, First
Earl of Malmesbury. Edited by his Grandson, the
third Earl 1
II. English Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century ... 26
III. 1. Diary of Travels in France and Spain, chiefly in
the Year 1844. By the Rev. Francis Trench.
2. Rome and the Reformation ; or, a Tour in the
South of France. A Letter to the Rev. R. Burgess.
By I. H. Merle D'Aubigne.
3. Letters from the Pyrenees. By T. Clifton Paris,
B,A. Trinity College, Cambridge.
4. Vacation Rambles and Thoughts. By T. N. Tal-
fourd, D.C.L.
5. A Pilgrimage to Auvergne, from Picardy to Le
Velay. By Louisa S. Costello 61
IV. 1 . Lebengescliichte des Baron de la Motte Fouque.
1840.
2. Ausgewahlte Werke von Friedrich Baron de la
Motte Fouque.' 1841 83
NO. XLIX. N.S.
CONTENTS.
ART. PAGE
V. History of the Consulate and the Empire. By M.
Thiers. Translated by D. Forbes Campbell,
Esq 105
VI. The Life of Baber, Emperor of Hindostan. By R. M.
Caldecott, Esq 133
VII. The Life of the Rev. Joseph Blanco White, written by
himself; with portions of his Correspondence.
Edited by John Hamilton Thorn 144
NOTICES OF BOOKS 213
CONTENTS
OF
No. L.
PAGE
ART. I. A History of the Church in Russia. By A. N. Mou-
ravieff. 245
II. The Elements of Morality, including Polity. By
William Whewell, D.D. Master of Trinity College,
Cambridge 332
III. Diary in France. By Charles Wordsworth, D.D. ...356
IV. 1. Amy Herbert. By a Lady.
2. Stories Illustrative of the Lord's Supper. By the
Author of Amy Herbert.
3. The First Voyage of Rodolph the Voyager. Edited
by the Rev. William Sewell, B.D.
4. The Second Voyage of Rodolph the Voyager, &c. 377
V. 1. Philip Van Artevelde. By Henry Taylor.
2. Edwin the Fair. By Henry Taylor 408
VI. Marco Visconti. Translated from the Italian of Tomaso
Grossi 461
NO. L. N.S.
CONTENTS.
ART. PAGE
V. History of the Consulate and the Empire. By M.
Thiers. Translated by D. Forbes Campbell,
Esq 105
VI. The Life of Baber, Emperor of Hindostan. By R. M.
Caldecott, Esq 133
VII. The Life of the Rev. Joseph Blanco White, written by
himself; with portions of his Correspondence.
Edited by John Hamilton Thorn 144
NOTICES OF BOOKS 213
CONTENTS
OF
No. L.
PAGE
ART. I. A History of the Church in Russia. By A. N. Mou-
ravieff. 245
II. The Elements of Morality, including Polity. By
William Whewell, D.D. Master of Trinity College,
Cambridge 332
III. Diary in France. By Charles Wordsworth, D.D. ... 356
IV. 1. Amy Herbert. By a Lady.
2. Stories Illustrative of the Lord's Supper. By the
Author of Amy Herbert.
3. The First Voyage of Rodolph the Voyager. Edited
by the Rev. William Sewell, B.D.
4. The Second Voyage of Rodolph the Voyager, &c. 377
V. 1. Philip Van Artevelde. By Henry Taylor.
2. Edwin the Fair. By Henry Taylor 408
VI. Marco Visconti. Translated from the Italian of Tomaso
Grossi 461
NO. L. N.8.
JI CONTENTS.
PAGE
VII. I. Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie. Par Volney.
2. Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem, et de Jerusalem a
Paris. Par Chateaubriand.
3. Voyage en Orient. Par Alphonse de Lamartine.
4. Reise in das Morgenland. Schubert.
5. Letters from the East. By Lord Lindsay.
6. Visit to the East. By the Rev. H. Formby, &c. ... 498
NOTICES OF BOOKS 534
ST. AUGUSTINE'S COLLEGE AT CANTERBURY 549
THE
CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.
JULY, 1845.
ART. I. Diaries and Correspondence of JAMES HARRIS, First
Earl of Malmesbury. Edited by his Grandson, the third Earl.
4 vols. 8vo. London: Richard Bentley. 1845.
* THESE are the generations of the sons of Noah, and unto
them were sons born after the flood.' Thus does the sacred
historian refer to that grand disruption of the ancient world, by
which the whole fabric of society was destroyed. The elements
of human life required to be reconstituted: old associations
were obliterated ; old institutions forgotten. How idle had been
the record of those gorgeous palaces, the abode of primeval
fiants, which were now tenanted by the monsters of the deep I
uch is the criticism which, at first sight, strikes us, when we
open four bulky volumes of the gossip and intrigue, the licenti-
ousness and treachery, of those continental courts, which were
just about to be overwhelmed by the deluge of the French Re-
volution. The cabals of freethinking courtiers; the deeper
designs of Catharine or Frederic; the adroitness of Sir Jaraes
Harris's counterplots at Berlin or the Hague; his occasional
success; his usual discomfiture, what is all this to us, who
walk forth on the surface of a new world, and are rather
interested with its life and freshness, than with the history
of those metamorphic rocks, which constitute its interior
soil?
And yet for all this, the volumes before us have their interest.
Let us be recalled by some historical Buckland to an inquiry
into those effete causes which were the agents in such great
catastrophies ; and we cannot deny the importance of moral
geology ; we cannot but find it of benefit to revert to the facts
which lie before us, in the order of God's providence, rather than,
like the Dean of York, to derive our conclusions from unsupported
hypothesis. In the letters and journals of our author, we are
perpetually reminded of those glaring vices by which the great
ones of the earth have, at certain periods, provoked God's
punishment. "We see the floodtide of republican fury let loose
as clearly to overthrow and abolish the guilty triflers of the con-
NO. XLIX. N.S. B
2 Lord Malmesbury's Journal.
tinent, as we can read the causes of the Deluge in the violence
and license, which, in the days of Noah, overspread the earth.
This lesson is taught the more remarkably, because Lord
Malmesbury walked blindfold amidst all the warnings which sur-
rounded him. No man has more completely illustrateda rule, which
it was reserved for the flippant folly of a certain shallow traveller
to avow 'from all display of sound learning, and religious
knowledge, and from all good moral reflections, the volume is
thoroughly free.'
But we must proceed to a short account of our journalist.
James Harris, the son of a well-known writer on philology, was
born at Salisbury, April 21st, A. D. 1746. His father had de-
dicated his 'Hermes' to Lord Hardwicke, as a lover of that
' polite literature, which, in the most important scenes of busi-
ness, you have still found time to cultivate.' He does not appear
to have infused the same taste into the mind of his son. Not only
are his letters absolutely destitute of any scintillations of genius,
but there is nothing of that richness and elegance by which the
most commonplace productions of a superior mind are usually
adorned. Inest sua gratia parvis. A few ordinary Latin phrases
a few French proverbs these are all the signs of literature
which replaced the learned notes of the ' Philosophical Disquisi-
tions.' In particular are we struck by the absence of any
acquaintance with that copious and original language, within
hearing of which Lord Malmesbury passed half his life.
Except in an accidental notice, that Pitt and Lord Mulgrave
came to him one Sunday to interpret a Dutch newspaper, in
which was announced the capitulation of Ulm (the public offices
being closed on that day), we see no reference to any knowledge
of the Teutonic languages. His phrase, that he ( translated it as
w^ell as he could,' (vol. iv. p. 340,) shows no great acquaintance
even with Dutch : of German he appears to have been pro-
foundly ignorant. His excuse is to be found in the prejudice
which suggested to Goethe's father his strange unfairness to all
native talent, and to which Schiller makes so beautiful an
allusion :
Kein Augustisch Alter bliihte,
Keines Medizaers Gute,
Lachelte der deutschen Kunst ;
Sie ward nicht gepflegt vom Ruhrne,
Sie entfaltete die Blume,
Nicht am Straht der Fiirstengunst.
Von dem grossten deutschen Sohne
Von des grossen Friedrich's Throne
Ging sie schutzloss, ungeerht.
It is somewhat strange, however, that the philosopher of Salis-
bury should not have given a more literary direction to the active
Lord Malmesbury's Journal. 3
mind of his son: indeed, we are surprised to find, among the
mistakes which are not infrequent in the editorial part of
these volumes, [by the present Earl], that the name of so
distinguished a scholar as Bishop Lowth, in the preface
to whose English Grammar the 'Hermes' is eulogized, should
be sufficiently unknown to be altered into South, (Introduc-
tory Memoir, p. vi.) With the exception of various errors
of a similar kind, we must give the noble editor credit
for good sense and good feeling, and his publication is one
among the many proofs, which our literature affords, that the
present state of our schools and Universities, makes it impossible
to pass through them with as little profit as James Harris expe-
rienced, according to his own account, in a two years' residence
at Merton. The real education, however, of the man of business
began when he left Oxford, at the beginning of Long Vacation,
A. D. 1765, and took up his residence at Ley den. His first
official employment was at Madrid, in 1767 ; next year he was
made minister at Berlin. In 1777, he was sent to Russia; and
at subsequent periods he was employed in Holland, Germany,
and France. In all these positions he acquitted himself as a man
of probity and talent ; and if he was almost always unsuccessful,
it was only because his lot was cast upon a time when the tide of
affairs was unpropitious. To his employers he very properly
gave satisfaction ; he received a pension ; was made Knight of the
Bath, while in Russia, A. D. 1780, and created Lord Malmes-
bury after the most successful of all his attempts, in 1788. He
was made an Earl in 1800.
His title, indeed, was the reward of services, which he himself
professes to have been rather those of a political emissary, than
of an Ambassador. In the year 1785, the States of Holland were
convulsed by a revolutionary movement, to which the great
struggle with our American colonies had been the precursor.
Influenced by the spirit which had led Franklin and Washington
to free themselves from the rule of George the Third, three
leading men in the European confederacy, the Pensionaries of
Amsterdam, Dort, and Harlem, resolved to free their country
from the ascendancy of the Stadtholder. With this domestic
convulsion would have been connected apparently a wider plea
for adding Bavaria to the Austrian dominions, compensating the
Elector by giving him a kingdom, somewhat analogous to that
at present ruled by Leopold, excepting that the participation
of France would be secured by the cession of Namur and
Luxembourg. 1 The personal qualities of the Prince of Orange
gave an opening for their attempt. He was irresolute, timid, and
1 Tomline's Life of Pitt, c. vi. Tomline gives no account of the internal
disputes in Holland.
B2
4 Lord Malmesbury^ s Journal.
inactive. But the Princess of Orange, niece to the great Frederic,
whose dying hand still grasped the sceptre of the House of
Brandenburg, had something of her uncle's spirit. At this mo-
ment it was that Sir James Harris was appointed Ambassador
at the Hague. With that inborn hatred to France, which belonged
to his age and country, he entered at once into their internal
intrigues, which were to prevent the Court of Versailles from
playing the same game which it had successfully prosecuted in
the western hemisphere. This was the only diplomatic trans-
action of his life, except the comparatively unimportant affair of
the Falkland Islands, in which Lord Malmesbury had the least
success. And though it was an affair of no great moment at
the time, and was completely effaced from public attention by
the stirring incidents which shortly succeeded; yet, as almost
the only thing which he conducted successfully, and as a good
sample of adroitness and enterprise, we would recommend it to
those who love to be conversant with the secret history of such
adventures.
According to his own estimate, Lord Malmesbury seems to
have run some little personal risk in his undertaking. The
easy task of tilting against a polite adversary with protocols, in
which the only danger was, whether he should give a title some-
what higher than he received, (as in the case of his subsequent
conferences with Delacroix at Paris,) was exchanged for more
serious labours. f Make the best of me,' he writes to Lord
Carmarthen, ' as I have no personal fears, and should have no
care about my own head being broken' [what would the author
of ( Hermes ' have said at Priscian's head being thus broken ?] ( if
the same stroke did not affect that of his Majesty's minister.'
Vol. ii. p. 94.
6 If I mean to do anything of notoriety, I must wield the spit
' as well as the pen. Dutch hearts lie to the leeward of their
' stomachs ; and if I now, at this moment, make any impression
* on them, it is from the beef and pudding they see in the back-
< house. 1 Vol. ii. p. 98.
We might quote many extracts of a similar kind : every day's
feelings and expectations are detailed with prolixity : the Ambas-
sador appears to have thought all hopeless, when suddenly the
Prussian monarch, Frederic William, nephew and successor to
Frederic the Great, decided the question by sending an army to
his sister's assistance. In this whole transaction we cannot but
suppose that the efforts of Lord Malmesbury at the Hague con-
tributed a good deal to strengthen and encourage the party of
the Stadtholder, and that his caution and dexterity in addressing
himself to the King of Prussia was a main cause of the conduct
of that monarch. His intercourse with the King took place
Lord Malmesbury 1 s Journal. 5
at Loo, where Frederic William was visiting his sister, the
Princess of Orange, and to which place Lord Malmesbury be-
took himself, without stating his real object. His purpose was
to gain a private interview, at which he might set forth the
urgent political reasons why Prussia should support the Govern-
ment of Holland.
' Although the persons who attended the King, Bishopswerder, Bruhl,
Gensaw, and Stein, were all well disposed but the last, I was determined
not to apply to any of them for assistance, but address myself directly
to his Prussian Majesty .... I kept my intentions a profound secret
from every body but the Princess [of Orange]. I resisted the repeated
and urgent solicitations both of M. D'Alvensleben and several other
persons at Loo, with whom I had the habit of living in confidence j and
I appeared so entirely occupied with the festivity which was going for-
ward, as to make most people (as they told me afterwards) suppose that
I had no other object in coming to Loo than to pay my court. The
only measure I took was to prevent M. Stein from seeing the King
alone before I had my first audience, and, for this purpose, I gave 100
ducats to the valet-de-chambre, who stood at the closet-door, and whom
I had well known at Berlin, with a promise of as many more if he would
refuse the entree to M. Stein, under any pretence he thought better, till
the next morning .... It succeeded to my wishes ; M. Stein twice pre-
sented himself at the closet-door, and was twice sent away.' Vol. ii.
p. 4:25.
The result is much like that in a novel : the King of Prussia,
before full of suspicion, is completely won ; Holland is saved ;
and Mr. Harris becomes Lord Malmesbury. Such was the
denouement of the ' Provisional Treaty of Loo.'
We have dwelt upon this transaction as a favourable specimen
of the skill of our Ambassador : he appears to have justified to
himself the use of artifice and bribery, because he was satisfied
that bribery of a more direct kind was employed on all sides of
him. (With this he expressly charges the Prussian Ambassador
at the Hague, whom he imagined to be in the pay of France.
Vol. ii. p. 115.) But we should not think it our part, as Chris-
tian Remembrancers, to dwell at length on such transactions, did
they not affect the character and conduct of persons for whom,
as Englishmen, we must always be interested, and reflect light
upon the course of God's providence in the history of the world.
It was in the course of his embassage at the Hague that Lord
Malmesbury first came in contact with that great statesman,
whose name will long be a rallying point in European history.
But it has been the fortune of WILLIAM PITT to be so identified
with the conduct of the French war, that those who regard him
as a singular example of personal independence and high-minded
devotion to the public good, can hardly rescue him from the
6 Lord Malmesbury s Journal.
imputation of being too much inclined to hostility and bloodshed.
These pages, however, afford sufficient proof of that which was
before known to the close observers of his conduct, that Mr.
Pitt's turn of mind was eminently pacific, and that it was slowly
and unwillingly that he allowed himself to be diverted from those
prospects of national aggrandizement which he had anticipated
from the extension of internal trade, and the maintenance of
foreign tranquillity. Lord Malmesbury, a courtier of the old
school, and a foreigner, rather than an Englishman, in his notions
of policy, had evidently small sympathy with this portion of the
great mind of the man of the age. We must say a word of
their relations to one another.
Our Ambassador had been a friend to Fox when at College,
and, as a member of the Coalition Parliament, was opposed to the
first successes of the son of Chatham. But when Mr. Pitt came
into power with his hands unfettered by pledges in 1784, he was
employed, as we have described, in Holland, Mr. Pitt being able to
afford a disregard to party connexions, which would not have been
shown probably by his rivals, and being swayed by considerations
of merit, rather than by those of alliance. Thus continued their
connexion till Lord Malmesbury was raised to the Peerage in
1788. "Within a few weeks after this event he ranged himself
on Fox's side in the disputes respecting the Regency, which
were made so memorable by the treachery of Thurlow ; and
hence resulted a quarrel with Mr. Pitt, which is passed over
as lightly as may be in these volumes, but in which Mr. Pitt
and the King thought themselves not very kindly used (to say
the least) by the new-made Peer. This breach was not healed
till Lord Malmesbury, with a considerable portion of the leading
Whigs, Lord Loughborough, Windham, Burke, &c., were
driven to amalgamate, by the republican excesses of 1792, with
their political opponents.
Now we are well satisfied that the statesmen with whom Lord
Malmesbury acted, and the principles which governed his poli-
tical life, were in every respect inferior to those of the school
of Mr. Pitt. The year 1784, which brought Mr. Pitt's friends
into power on a flood- tide of popular favour, was the era when
a host of venal politicians were finally shelved, and when
more honourable principles came into action. Allowing the
most perfect probity to Mr. Fox, it is yet certain that the son of
the first Lord Holland came out of a far different school from
the son of the great Chatham. With the inheritance of all his
father's virtues, but without that vanity and impracticable temper
which detracted so seriously from their use, William Pitt was
enabled to introduce a purity and justice into the management
of public affairs, of which before there had been no example.
Lord Malmesburys Journal. 7
To him it is that the total eradication of the vicious system of
bribing Members of Parliament, introduced by Walpole, must
be mainly attributed. The public loans had, till his time, been
a source of the most corrupt peculations. He remedied this
monstrous evil. The Crown lands had been scandalously mis-
used. He restored order, and banished malversation. The
freat deeds of this upright and honourable man were not of a
ind to attract that public notice which follows rather from
the creation of new institutions than from the purification of old
ones. But had his early designs been more fully carried out
had he reformed the representation without violence had he
abolished all the abuses which he was silently removing the
gradual work would have astonished those who measure things
only by results, and the altered state of England would have
obviated many subsequent evils. It may be supposed how
ungrateful was the threat of foreign assaults to one who was
thus occupied in domestic reconstruction. And of this we have
some singular instances in his intercourse with Lord Malmes-
bury. The foreign Ambassador, who looked at his country's
means as a positive fact, which were to be used like the wealth
or station of an individual for the sake of obtaining some specific
object in European policy, was amazed at finding the Crown's
chief minister wholly buried in thoughts and pursuits of a dif-
ferent character. In his humorous advice to servants, Swift
instructs each of them to keep up his master's credit, by seeing
that the whole of the family estate is expended in his separate
department. The butler is to spend the yearly rental in wine ;
the groom in riding-horses. The same notion seemed to prevail
among the employes of the old school : the King of England was
supposed to possess a plenary command of John Bull's resources,
which were all to be dedicated to some trivial adjustment of
the balance of Europe. In this spirit writes Lord Malmesbury
in 1785:
' Our principals at home are too much occupied with the House of
Commons to attend to what passes on the Continent ; and if any good
is ever done there, it must be effected through the King's ministers
abroad, and not by those about his person. Long experience has taught
me this : and I never yet received an instruction which was worth read-
ing.' Vol. ii. p. 113.
With these feelings he was little able to enter into the
plans of Mr. Pitt, for whose pacific policy, during the earliest
part of his ministry, he expresses considerable contempt. The
minutes of a Privy Council in 1787 are given. Mr. Pitt, we are
told, remarked,
1 That although in the upshot of the present business war was only
8 Lord Malmesbury's Journal.
a possible, not a probable, event, yet it being a possible one was sufficient
to make it necessary for England to reflect before she stirred ; to weigh
maturely whether anything could repay the disturbing that state of
growing affluence and prosperity in which she now was, and whether
this was not increasing so fast, as not to make her equal to resist any
force France could collect some years hence." Vol. ii. p. 305.
These were, doubtless, the palmy years of Mr* Pitt's power,
while as yet he was associated with the friends of his youth, and
before the growing blackness of Jacobinism had overcast the
political sky. It was no favourable change, which, by asso-
ciating him with men of a different cast, and compelling him to
a different policy, has connected his name with useless loans, and
unsuccessful coalitions. In that season of danger his great
powers and his unalterable firmness were so signally manifested
he held together the tottering fabric of public order with such a
giant grasp, and made head so nobly against the disturbers of
the nation, that it is as the opponent of the Revolution that he
is best remembered ; but his early and favourite attempts at the
regeneration of our political society were, in reality, most near
his heart. It is a singular proof how little he himself anticipated
the result of things, that, in the year before the French war, he
proposed to lower the nation's taxation, and declared his con-
viction that never was there a period when tranquillity might be
more reasonably expected for sixteen years to come. His anti-
cipating mind already surveyed the long course of economical
improvement through which the country might during that
period be conducted.
' O nimium coelo et pelago confise sereno.'
The public course of Mr. Pitt may be divided into two main
portions : the former, during which he indulged these expectations
of prospective benefit for Ms country, and during which his
actual services were neither few nor unimportant from 1784 to
1792; and a second and longer season during which the vessel of
the state was struggling amidst the breakers, during which no im-
provements could be expected, inasmuch as it required his strong
and untiring hand to hold an undeviating course. The effect of
such a life of hazard upon himself is well expressed by Lord
Malmesbury. ' Pitt died of old age at forty-six, as much as if he
( had been ninety.' (Vol. iv. p. 346.) Or, to quote from the Diary
of another of his friends : ( I spent an hour,' says Wilberforce,
6 in the pictures of our English worthies. Poor Pitt's a vile pic-
( ture his face anxious, diseased, reddened with wine, and soured
f and irritated by disappointments. Poor fellow, how unlike my
' youthful Pitt." * The last quotation leads us, by a very obvious
1 Wilberforce's Life, by his Sons, vol. v. p. 73.
Lord Malmesbury's Journal. 9
association, to mention one point of signal moment, in which the
Mr. Pitt of Lord Malmesbury and the Revolutionary war was
a different man from the destroyer of the Coalition party. We
have referred to the question of Parliamentary Reform, in which
Mr. Pitt would have introduced such an ameliorative system as
would have saved us from the drastic remedies of Lord John
Russell. If there be another question of primary importance,
with which the character and policy of this country has been
intimately connected, it is that of Slavery and the Slave Trade.
To say nothing of its political eifect during the last quarter of
a century, of the manner in which it associated the advocates of
change with the opponents of cruelty and injustice ; to look only
at its obvious influence in setting forth a high standard of right
and truth before the nations of the world, it is impossible to
doubt that the conduct of Great Britain in respect of this
eventful subject is among the most important incidents in the
century. When one of our ablest statesmen would oppose the
somewhat fanciful denunciations of Mr. Ward (in his ( Ideal of
a Christian Church'), to what circumstances does he refer in
defence of our national character ? ' Mr. Ward,' he says, ' has
' heard of African slavery, and of the slave trade. Let him
' recollect, and when he next writes, let him, for very shame,
' record, that his country, influenced, we must say, by its senti-
( ments of religion, abolished that slave trade in 1807, and
( extirpated slavery itself, at an immense pecuniary cost, in
' 1833.' 1
Now it should be recorded in Mr. Pitt's praise, that he was
one of the earliest and warmest opposers of this guilty traffic,
and that it was only by his combination with that lower and
less disinterested party which joined him in 1792, that he was
prevented from aiding the Abolitionists with that full efficiency
which he had formerly thrown into their support. Among his
services to this great cause may be mentioned that his advice
contributed to induce Mr. Wilberforce to bring it for the first
time before the legislature, while as yet there was none of that
popular movement by which, in turns, it was assisted and im-
peded. 2 The next few years gave the utmost promise of success.
In 1792 the House of Commons agreed to prohibit the slave
trade in four years. But then came a change over the public
spirit. The reaction against revolutionary principles delayed
this concession to humanity and justice for a period of fifteen
gloomy years. The official influence of Pitt was as ineffectual
1 Quarterly Review, No. cxlix. p. 167. This review is generally attributed to
the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone.
2 Wilberforce's Life, vol. i. p. 151.
10 Lord Malmeslurys Journal.
as the perseverance of Wilberforce. Not till the dread of revo-
lution had passed away, till Bonaparte had taken his place amidst
the thrones of Europe, and democracy had ceased to be the
stalking-horse, under which avarice could disguise her designs,
could this tardy sacrifice be rendered either to the fear of God, or
to the voice of human indignation.
It a little surprises us to read so many pages, penned by
an able, and, we would hope, a benevolent man, without any
reference to the attainment of a national object so credit-
able to our public character. Among the most interesting
parts of these volumes is a copious diary, in which, during
his latter days, the retired ambassador put down any well-
supported rumour which found its way to his ears. We are
disappointed to find that not a word indicates his interest in this
great national deliverance. His feelings on the subject are too
clearly shown, we fear, in an entry in the earlier portion of the
work.
1 The Duke of Portland and myself argued on the absolute necessity of
coining to a clear and explicit understanding, first with Fox, as to his prin-
ciples and intended conduct on several great public measures, in which he
was involved, and then to the same clear and explicit understanding with
Pitt on them. These measures were Parliamentary Reform, the Abo-
lition of the Slave Trade, the Repeal of the Test Act, and the system to
be observed relative to French Politics. That on all these Fox dif-
fered from us, and Pitt on several of them.' Vol. ii. p. 461.
The hint thus supplied as to the policy of the great party with
which Lord Malmesbury was connected is of no little importance.
Of all the rumours by which Mr. Pitt's character has been
assailed, none has been more injurious to him with earnest-
minded men than that his support of the abolition of the
slave trade was simulated and unreal ; and that had he truly
exerted his influence, that great blot might have been swept
away years before from the escutcheon of his country. Never was
there a more baseless charge. The sole argument which gives
it currency is, that the abolition was carried during the official
existence of the Whigs. Fox, they say, would have carried it
had he been in office a year longer Pitt, therefore, might have
done so during his long time of office. We see, however, from
this work, that the party arrayed against Pitt was even more
opposed to the abolition than that portion of the Tory party by
which abolition was actually defeated. Had he chosen, it is
said, to make this the turning point of his official life, to have
renounced his party rather than to abandon it ; to have united
with those who, on other points, opposed him, provided only that,
as Abolitionists, they were of his mind, he would easily have
dragged Dundas and his sordid partisans at his chariot wheels.
Lord Malmesbury's Journal. 11
Well, suppose it done, with whom should Mr. Pitt ally himself?
Fox, it is true, was always faithful to the cause of humanity.
But could opposition be overcome, after the manner of Don
Quixote, by the services of two unsupported knight-errants ?
There was need not only of speeches, but of votes. Where was
Mr. Pitt to look for the rank and file of his army ? Who would
enact
' fortemque Cyan, fortemque Cloanthum ?'
The truth appears to have been, that the more sober part of
the nation at large was yet indisposed to the cause of abolition ;
and just at this critical season, when everything ought to have
been done to hush the public suspicion, the injudicious conduct
of some of the opponents of the slave trade gave their enemies
the very opportunity, for which they had been seeking, of asso-
ciating this movement with revolutionary excesses. The conse-
quence was, that if Mr. Pitt had been willing to renounce office
for the sake of joining the camp of the Abolitionists, he would
have joined them alone. Nor could this obstacle be overcome,
until after, in vain, endeavouring to make head against the
national mind, the 'Abolition Society, which by its revolutionary
connexions had raised so strong a prejudice against real reforms,
died away and was forgotten. It was scarcely heard of after the
year 1792, and from that time the subject was kept before the
public mind in a more wholesome manner, by the yearly motions
made by Wilberforce in Parliament. By their influence was the
public mind gradually leavened, till another generation had arisen,
by which abolition of the slave trade was no longer associated with
the French revolution or the ' Corresponding Society.' That the
slave trade, therefore, was not abolished till the year 1807, was not
from any want of sincerity in Mr. Pitt, nor was the subsequent
success the result of Mr. Fox's influence : the great change in
the public mind, and the labours of that good man who devoted
his station and talents to this single cause, were the real means
by which the providence of God was effecting its will.
It may be seen from Mr. Wilberforce's life, that he was
himself well satisfied, that amidst the many obstacles to his
success, any lack of sincerity in Pitt was not to be numbered.
Not only was he incessantly intent on keeping his less discreet
partisans, especially Mr. Clarkson, from committing the cause of
abolition by any partnership in revolutionary excesses, but we
meet with several such statements as the following : ' We have
' nothing to defend us against the effect of St. James's being
* against us, but that of Pitt and all his connexions and known
' supporters being warmly with us.' ' This is part of a letter
1 Wilberforce's Life, vol. i. p. 352.
1 2 Lord Malmesbury 's Journal.
written June 7th, 1792; and only a week afterwards Pitt is
stated by our journalist to have held the following language to
Lord Loughborough, with whom he dined at Dundas's :
' On Lord Loughborough's observing to him that perhaps the strong
manner in which he (Pitt) had promoted the abolition of the slave trade
would require some explanation, he said, certainly some concessions must
be made ; the king did not like the measure, and very naturally ; still less
the manner in which it was supported by addresses and petitions, a
method he (Pitt) also disliked, as it was a bad precedent to establish.'
Vol. ii. p. 464.
We have been the more full in vindicating Mr. Pitt from the
charge of insincerity in this cause, both because it is the point
in which he has seemed to some zealous and good men the most
open to attack, and because it is from a thorough ignorance
of his real nature, and of the main efforts by which, in his
earlier years, he deserved the thanks of his country, that the
suspicion originates. That, from the year 1792, he was never
able to give either his mind or his efforts, in any unchecked
manner, to the objects which he had loved, we readily believe.
The desire of raising his own country to continued prosperity,
and of recompensing Africa and the subject colonies for all those
political evils with which we had afflicted them, had been well
fitted to occupy his generous heart and large understanding.
They were of a kind to appeal to his chivalrous sense of honour,
to his patriotic self-renouncement, and his hatred of injustice
and oppression. But he was doomed, for the residue of a disap-
pointed life, to struggle against the outbreaks of that hellish
faction, which it tasked all his powers of combination and
firmness to resist. Henceforth all hopes of improvement were
to be baffled by this hateful foe :
' quacunque viam virtute petivit
Successum Dea Dira negat.'
And yet we cannot close our defence of Mr. Pitt's policy,
without allowing that it failed of aiming at the highest mark,
and was destitute therefore of those real principles which can
regenerate society. The great statesman of the revolutionary
war was certainly not a religious statesman. A moral man he
was, free from the sensual temptations by which the sordid herd
are enthralled, pure, true, confiding, generous. But of the gifts
of grace he had never heard, nor knew of those reforming and
restoring principles, with which the great Maker has enriched
His Church, that by her supernatural energies she may restore
life and vigour to the decaying trunk of national vitality.
Herein lay Mr. Pitt's great misfortune. What mighty effects
might not have ensued, if those precious years which elapsed
Lord Malmesburt/s Journal. 13
between the American and French wars had been employed in
correcting that which caused the one, and in supplying that
which would have been our true safeguard in the other ! If Sir
Robert Peel were asked, in the present day, what it is which
really impedes the government of this country, what fetters our
energies, and prevents us from ameliorating the condition of the
people, he would doubtless confess that it is our lack of religious
concord. Were England but one with itself in faith, it were
irresistible. Would we establish a colony, would we remedy the
ignorance of our poor, this hated obstacle still withstands our
efforts. And when did it arise ? It was in that rapid growth of
numbers, which closed the old century and commenced the new
one, while the Church remained undilated, like the garments of
youth on the form of manhood, that this fearful division gained
unchecked controul. In 1792, the great body of the nation con-
sisted of Churchmen. The smoking ruins of Priestley's dwelling
at Birmingham, the fires of the No-Popery riots, are alike indi-
cative of the public sentiments. Whatever judgment may be
passed on these events, they prove a depth of popular feeling to
which we are, and in a sense unhappily, total strangers. Then it
was not the Prelates of the Church whom a treacherous Premier
could advise to set their houses in order. Oh, what might be the
difference of our political, as well as social state, if that happy
period of security had been duly used ! We speak of the peace-
ful part of Mr. Pitt's administration, as that which might have
been thus employed, because nothing could have been expected
from those who preceded him : their object was not to use office,
but to retain it. But if that season of abundance had found
an enlightened, as it did a patriotic, statesman ; had there been
a Joseph to expound the future, and to point to the real security
against impending ills, how noble might have been this man's
services ! The national wealth was at his absolute disposal. One
or two of those millions which Lord Malmesbury was employed
to lavish in hiring foreign soldiers, who deceived us, might have
supplied the forty or fifty Sees, for want of which the discipline
of the Church languishes ; and the 2000 Pastors, who would
have carried the Gospel through the dark corners of our country.
Our colonies too might have been a cause of strength, instead of
exhausting weakness, and the English Church might have sur-
passed that of Rome in the number of her sons, as well as she
boasts to do in the purity of her doctrines.
But here we are met with a great practical difficulty, the
difficulty by which we believe that Pitt was really embar-
rassed. What was the conduct of the clergy whom we
already possessed? Were they men of piety and prayer? As
well lavish our money in hiring soldiers who would not fight,
as in hiring priests who would not pray. We are far from
14 Lord Malmesbunjs Journal.
agreeing with Mr. Rigby's remark to Coningsby, that all which
was needed was to build a few more Churches. To what purpose
should there be delivered to us 2000 horses, unless we are able
on our part to set riders upon them ? Now we easily believe,
that hard as it was to find a general who could match Napo-
leon ; to find forty or fifty, nay, to find ten men, who were
prepared worthily to occupy the seat of the Apostles, was yet
more difficult. Look back at that distant period of our Church's
history, open its books, inquire into its actions, and where are we
to look for that union of earnestness with faith, for that zeal
according to knowledge, to which the sceptres of the Church of
England could be safely entrusted ? Zeal there was indeed, in
the latter part of Mr. Pitt's life, in the nascent school of Scott
and Newton ; but how could they execute an office with fidelity,
in the existence of which they did not believe ? A bishop who
does not believe in the Apostolic succession, is like a man who
carries a message in a language with which he is not acquainted.
Have we not ourselves witnessed the disgraceful spectacle of
men who do their office indeed in ordaining others, because they
cannot help it, but who tell the world plainly, that they do not
believe there is any meaning in the functions which they
execute ? This of course is no new thing : among the first
Apostles was one who had no real faith in the office with which
he was intrusted. But can we expect such men to regenerate
a Church in whose formularies they do not believe ? Take, for
instance, Thomas Scott, an earnest, sincere, we wish we could
say, self-denying man, but it is impossible to bestow the praise
of self-denial on one who was driven to a marriage with his
servant within a few months of his wife's death, professedly
because he had not the grace of continence. This is glossed
over in his life ; but it was one of the man's merits that he was
sincere and earnest, and he made no scruple of confessing his
real motive to his friends. Had it been enough to declaim with
earnestness against the vices of the age, from the pulpit, no man
would have done it with more serious diligence than Scott. But
how could he discharge a function with success, with whose true
existence he was unacquainted ? Not himself believing in the
doctrines of grace, as they are set forth in the Church's record,
confounding it with that mere excitement of the natural man,
to which mortal nature is incident, not knowing that God has
incorporated a spiritual society, that real powers might be trans-
mitted to the latest generations, it was wholly impossible that
he could do justice to a system of which he had no consciousness.
And yet, if we take leave of this party in the Church, where
should we look for those by whom the designs of a reformer
might be effected ? This, however, is no excuse for a man,
who, having the command both of wealth and numbers, might
Lord Malmesburys Journal. 15
have fashioned fit instruments for his work. If soldiers or
sailors were wanted, must not men be trained for the service ?
And is not education as well adopted to bring out those qualities,
by which the warriors of the Church militant must be charac-
terized ? Had Mr. Pitt himself believed in the doctrines which
the Church Prayer-Book expresses, had he opened it to learn,
and not as men do too commonly, to criticize, he would have
seen that it implies certain habits of self-denial and devotion, a
certain fixed course of life, the addiction of the whole powers to
certain specific objects, which reflection must at once have shown
him would never be sought save by those who were accustomed
from youth to honour and pursue them. But if he looked back
on his own University and Lord Malmesbury would have told
the same of Oxford he must have discerned that it was not from
such a system that he could expect the virtue and self-devotion
of saints. Was it reasonable that men who had given their
younger years to the hunting-field, or the convivial party, should
turn out men of God? Was the card-playing combination-
room a meet preparation for the self-denying labours of the
country village? As we sow we must reap.
* Non his juventus orta parentibus.'
It must be to other sources that he must have recourse, if he
would have a priesthood trained to make God's services their
main work. He must have seminaries, in which prayer
and teaching must take the place of wine-parties, in which a
deep and reverential study of our ancient authors must be sub-
stituted for skill in cards, or dexterity at tennis ; he must bring
men up in the Church's laws, if he would expect them to be
her faithful ministers. He did this for the Romanists. He
endowed a seminary in which their priesthood were to be taught
those peculiar lessons which their system needed. Was the
Church of England of less value? Were her sons less numerous ?
the growth of her institutions less near his heart ?
We speak of things which unhappily yet remain to be done,
and which will be done, so soon as zeal and orthodoxy are found
united in high places. And for the attainment of these objects,
far more has been done by the humble labours of a few pale
students, unseen beyond the narrow limits of a University,
than by all the power of the great minister, who with boundless
resources and unquestionable patriotism, was yet powerless,
because he was without Faith. To him we impute no blame
beyond that which attached to his generation ; but, had his eye
been opened to discern the true principles of things, the result,
we are confident, had been different. But thus is it ever
in the order of God's will : He has chosen the weak things of
1 6 Lord Malmesbury's Journal.
the earth to confound the mighty. Certainly it cannot be
wondered that Mr. Pitt should have left such matters in the
hands of those leaders of the Church, whose office it was to
regard them. And yet to worse hands they could not have
been committed. The probates of their wills are a sufficient
condemnation of Mr. Pitt's prelates. The Bishop who saves
300,000 can have little thought that he has anything else to
save. In these journals we have a repetition of the old story,
that it was to the natural instinct of the good old King that we
owe our escape from seeing Mr. Pitts' tutor at Lambeth : ( The
King refused to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, on
Moore's death ; ' alleging for reason, ( that if a private secretary
of a first minister was put at the head of the Church, it would
make all his Bishops party-men and politicians.' Vol. iv. 375.
However well founded his Majesty's objection, we cannot but
think that there existed still more obvious reasons against !
Tomline's promotion. To say nothing of his disgraceful covet-
ousness, we must attribute to him more than any man, the low
estimate which Mr. Pitt evidently entertained of all religious
doctrines, and which influenced him so fatally in selecting men for
those momentous situations to which he recommended. Let it be
remembered, that Mr. Pitt seldom attended Church, never the
Lord's Supper ; and then let us ask how a Christian Prelate could
tell him, in the dedication of a work ' designed for the use of
young students in divinity,' that he had ( evinced himself the
zealous friend of religion,' and that, f under the influence of
religious principle,' his ( conduct has afforded an eminent example
of private, as well as of public virtue.'
And yet, this is not all. The first edition of that meagre
book, the ' Elements of Christian Theology,' is dated July 1st,
1799; and exactly one year before, the individual, whose
religious character is thus highly lauded, had employed the
afternoon of one of the highest Christian Festivals (Whitsunday)
in fighting a duel. Can we wonder, that with this sample of
Church-of-England theology immediately before him, the great
Minister should have looked elsewhere for power to controul
the world ? Enthusiasm has its warmth, and superstition has its
mystery ; but an unbelieving orthodoxy can never rise above the
wearisome routine of a powerless decency. If the men of this
world are to look to the Church for aid, it must be to the living
spectacle of an earnest devotion.
Such a spectacle Mr. Pitt had not the advantage of beholding
among any of those divines with whom he was most familiar.
No wonder then, that it was not to his choice that we owe even
that little modicum of zeal which was to be found at the end of
the last century in the rulers of the Church. Porteous, incom-
Lord Malmesburtfs Journal. 17
parably the best Bishop of the day, was preferred through the
Queen's favour. The theological acquirements of Horsley
recommended him to the notice of the rugged Thurlow. Bar^-
rington was put forward by the king ; another party had been
named, but George the Third objected : he would never f make
a man Bishop of Durham, who would put all its revenues in his
pocket.' But no appointment of Pitt was half so creditable as
that of Burgess by Addington, a choice solely dictated almost
the first within late memory by the merits of the party, 1 In
this course Addington was followed by Lord Liverpool. But
Mr. Pitt had not sufficient appreciation of the Church's moment
to care for the selection of its rulers ; and in his days there was
no public opinion to direct the choice. It was not that the public
mind was not influenced, as it ever must be, by a regard to
merit ; but the absolute want of fit men had induced an insensi-
bility to the nature of the necessary qualifications. ' Cucullus
facit monachum? may be a good rule, when a strict and systematic
education subordinates a whole class to one rigid discipline ; but
it is fatal when preparation is left to chance, and yet occupancy
is the test of fitness.
We have dwelt at length on this subject, convinced that our
readers, at all events, will not run over history like an old
almanack, but will desire to trace God's dealings, and to learn
wisdom from the infatuation of preceding times, What can
show more clearly how shortsighted is the wisdom of this
world than the following letters, in which the practised courtier,
three years before that fearful retribution which God inflicted
on the Bourbon race, expressed his confidence in the stability of
their power ?
' From Sir James Harris to the Marquis of Carmarthen.
' Hague, 21st Nov. 1786.
' MY DEAR LOUD, Through a private but authorized channel, I learn
that in a few days his Prussian Majesty will have a declared mistress :
her name is De Voss, Maid of Honour to the Queen Dowager, niece to
the Mareschal de la Cour of the late Princess of Prussia, and daughter
to a person known at Berlin by the name of Mons, de Voss et de
Havelberg. She was a favourite during the life of the late King,
and all the ordinary means of seduction employed to lead her astray.
Too wise, too cold, or too virtuous to give way to them, she by repeated
refusals has worked up a passion to its height, and an offer has been
made to make her the Pompadour of Berlin. Some hesitation, from a
difference of opinion among her relations, has shown itself : but as the
lady now is on the yielding side, and as his majesty is bent on success,
1 Vide Harford's Life of Bishop Burgess, p. 204.
NO. XLIX. N.S. C
18 Lord Malmesbury's Journal.
there is little doubt of this event very soon taking place. She is a
niece of Count Fink's of course may raise his sinking influences. She
is more handsome than clever, probably more artful than either.
' A Madame de Pompadour, or even a Madame de Barri, will never
effectually diminish or hurt the grandeur of the French monarchy,
which is settled on a foundation beyond the reach of the follies of the
Court to shake ; but at Potzdam the case is widely different : the whole
mass of power is concentrated in the person of the king, and if his
shoulders are unequal to bear the burthen, the edifice falls.' Vol. ii.
p. 249.
We have referred before to the numerous indications which
these volumes offer of the gross immorality which prevailed
on the Continent. Surely the Corsican was the rod of God's
anger: 'I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and
* against the people of My wrath will I give him a charge.'
The whole tissue of foreign society appears to have been
demoralized ; and perhaps the business-like tone of our ambas-
sador in alluding to such scenes, says but little for his, or our,
Christian sense of shame. To say nothing of the gross impurities
of Catharine, 1 which may be attributed to the barbarism of the
Muscovite court, we read such extracts as the following:
1 You receive a very extraordinary despatch to-day from Berlin. The
late king had Solomon's wisdom : this seems disposed to have only his
concubines.' Vol. ii. p. 259.
The same was the state of things at Brunswick.
' In the evening with Mademoiselle de Hertzfeldt old Berlin ac-
quaintance now Duke's mistress much altered, but still clever and
agreeable . . . her apartment elegantly furnished and she herself, with
all the appareil of her situation. She was, at first, rather ashamed to
see me, but soon got over it.' Vol. iii. p. 156.
We have concluded what it seems to us most important to
say on these volumes ; we will present our readers, however,
with a short notice of their contents. There is much in them
to interest, and not a little to amuse ; but we cannot refrain
from saying that they contain much which delicacy and even
good faith should have prevented a grandson of the king's
minister from submitting to the public eye. The remarks of an
unofficial statesman may be unjust or indecent, but they violate
no understood compact of secrecy. The king's paid servants
owe him the same reserve as those who are employed as agents
by men in private situations. These remarks apply, especially,
both to the notices of Queen Caroline's first introduction to this
country, and to some very unpleasant statements respecting the
1 At vol. ii. p. 58, is a curious list of Catharine's presents to her favourites.
Lord Malmesbury's Journal. 19
alienation between George the Fourth and his father. It is im-
possible not to feel that George the Third might have the gravest
reasons for showing his displeasurse with his son ; and that to
stigmatise his letters, as does this writer, as ( void of any ex-
pression of parental kindness and aifection,' (vol. ii. p. 129,)
while the causes which produced them are unknown or unnoticed,
is to do virtual injustice to the parent.
But we proceed to our statement.
The first volume consists mainly of letters from Spain and
Russia. In his negotiations in Spain Mr. Harris was successful
(nearly his only successful attempt,) in procuring the restoration
of the Falkland Islands he was signally unsuccessful in Russia,
where his desire often his hope was to induce the Empress to
declare on our side during the American war. Her interest
was clearly on the side of the armed neutrality, by which the
Northern powers hoped to destroy our naval empire.
The second volume continues the Diary in Prussia, and then,
after a few letters written during the ineffectual struggle of the
coalition party against Mr. Pitt, the scene changes to the Hague.
A few curious notices occur respecting the Prince's debts.
The close of this volume contains some very interesting details
respecting the accession of part of the Whig party to Mr. Pitt's
politics in 1792 3. The difficulty here shown in changing
parties, even after principles have long been altered, may account
for our finding Sir Robert Peel in office in June 1845, rather
than Lord John Russell.
The third volume contains an account of Lord Malmesbury's
public services during the revolutionary war. These were first
at Berlin, whither he went to induce the King of Prussia to take
part against France ; and he succeeded in inducing Frederic
William to take our money, but without giving us any effectual
aid: then at Brunswick, and subsequently at Paris and Lisle,
We should quote his journal while in Brunswick, whither he
went to conduct the Princess of Wales to England, had it not
been quoted in extenso in every journal in the country. We
presume our readers to have had curiosity enough to run over
this strange story, while they were looking through the columns
of the Times to see what was the last express which ' our own
Correspondent' transmitted of the state of the surplice-war
from Ware or Exeter.
The report of Lord Malmesbury's visits to Paris and Lisle is
full of interest. His letters are, as usual, sensible, and at times
amusing ; but as we have sought in vain for a single piece of
sparkling ore in this extensive quarry, we will pick out a letter of
George Canning's, which has been stuck in among the rest like
a broken bit of looking-glass in a citizen's grotto.
c 2
20 Lord Malmesbury's Journal.
Letter from Mr. Canning to Mr. Ellis. 1
' Downing Street, 13th July, 1797, or rather 14th, 2 A.M.
1 MY DEAR GEORGE, As usual I have kept you for the last, meaning
to write you a very long letter, and to say to you whatever I had left
unsaid to other people, and to say over again to you whatever I had
said to them ; and now I am so tired and exhausted that it is a wonder
to me how much of these fine purposes I shall execute.
' I must tell you, because I have yet told nobody, not even " the
Lion" 2 himself, how much his despatch of yesterday is admired and
approved, as well as the conduct which it describes. Nothing could be
more able and judicious, the three points in Monday's conference
would have staggered the most practised combatant. But "the Lion"
seems to have received them all without flinching, and to have put them
by as quietly as you see they have been put by in the despatch of to-
day, where there is not a word said about them.
' With regard to the title of King of France, I am inclined to agree
with you, that if it is to be reasoned upon seriously we shall be beaten
in the argument, and had best look out for the most fanciful and
innocent renunciation. The chance in our favour is, I think, that this
frivolous question may ultimately be overwhelmed in the greater con-
siderations of the projet, and the commentary upon it, and that if a
treaty is agreed upon, or nearly so, within a short space of time, you
may, in the ardour of consummation, overleap all matters of form, and
then tack on your old apologetical article at the end without much
notice being taken. After all it is a grating thing God knows, I feel
it so ; and which of us that is, of " the Lion," you, and me, we might
add Windham, but he is beyond us, we might add Jenksburg, 3 I
believe, and all told which of us is there that does not feel it grating,
to have to continue modes of concession, instead of enforcing the justice
of demands'? And were I writing to you on the 13th of last December
instead of the present 13th of July, could I have thought with patience
of renunciation and restitution, unaccompanied by cessions to balance
and compensate them? But we cannot and must not disguise our
situation from ourselves. If peace is to be had, we must have it;
I firmly believe we must, and it is a belief which strengthens every day.
"When Windham says we must not, I ask him, " Can we have war ?" It
is out of the question, we have not the means we have not, what is of
all means the most essential, the mind. If we are not at peace, we shall
be at nothing. It will be a rixa between us and our enemy, of pulsation
on their side, and vapulation on ours. For my part, I adjourn my
objects of honour and happiness for this country beyond the grave of
our military and political consequence which you are now digging at
Lisle. I believe in our resurrection, and find my only comfort in it.
1 Mr. Ellis continued to be attached to Lord Malmesbury's embassy.
8 ' The Lion' was a nickname by which his intimate friends called Lord
Malmesbury, since some foreign newspaper had described him as resembling ' un
lion blanc,' from his fine eyes and his profusion of white hair.
3 A nickname for Jenkinson, afterwards Lord Liverpool, and Prime Minister.
Lord Malmesbury's Journal. 21
' But though I preach peace thus violently, do not imagine that I am
ready to take any that you may offer. I think it clear, from the con-
ferences that have yet passed, and from so much of the instructions of
the French plenipotentiaries as has yet been made known to you, that
there is no objection on their part to our stripping their allies, provided
we do it with decency and moderation ; and one of the characteristics
is, that so as they get something, they care not much from whom.
Give us, then, something to show as an acquisition but remember
(this is all that I intended by my shabby declamation two pages ago,)
that what may be very splendid as an acquisition, would be very in-
sufficient as a cause of quarrel. We can break off upon nothing but
what will rouse us from sleep and stupidity into a new life and action
what "will create a soul under the ribs of death!" for we are now
soulless and spiritless; and what would do this, except the defence of
Portugal, (I believe that would,) or the preservation of our integrity,
(our entireness, I would say,) I know not. All beyond this we shall
like to have, but we never shall fight for it. I am persuaded, however,
that we may yet have a good deal without fighting.
' I ought now to tell you something of what has been passing here
since you left us. There is but one event, but that is an even-t for the
world, Burke is dead ! * How and when the newspapers will tell you.
I know the details only from them. Mrs. Ore we, who was at Beacons-
field at the time, wrote only to say that she could not write to me; for
he had among all his great qualities that for which the world did not
give him sufficient credit of creating in those about him very strong
attachments and affection, as well as the unbounded admiration which
I, every day, am more and more convinced was his due. It is of a
piece with the peddling sense of these days, that it should be determined
to be imprudent for the House of Commons to vote him a monument.
He is the man that will mark this age, marked as it is in itself, by
events, to all time.
' But it grows very late, and I very tired my hand, at least, though
I have yet much to say, having in truth said nothing. Now for a few
questions, and I have done.
' How is " the Lion's" health 1
'What is your private life and conversation at Lisle? for I have
heard nothing of it from nobody.
' Why does not Morpeth write, as well as the rest of you, in the
despatches 1 Is he idle ? or is " the Lion" delicate 1 or is it chance 1
or does he do something else for you that does not appear 1
'And now good night, dear George, and God bless you. Ever
yours, G. C.' Vol. iii. p. 399.
We may now proceed to the fourth volume, in which is con-
tained a copious Diary, in which Lord Malmesbury, now an
established political quidnunc, puts down whatever gossip came
to his ears during the first few years of the present century.
1 Burke died July 8th, aged sixty-eight.
22 Lord Malmesbury's Journal.
We think the experiment is far from successful, if it be designed
to conduct to an accurate knowledge of past history; for the news
of the day were so transitory, and the judgments passed upon
them so uncertain and contradictory, that no page hardly of
this Diary can be read by which the adjoining pages are not
contradicted. We are led to prefer a narrative which has been
formed on a general view of the event, to this series of contra-
dictory conjectures. A well-known line describes the difficulty
of making way through an encumbered country,
IloXXa 8' dvavTci, Karavra, Trdpavrd rf, SoxA * */X0ov.
One day Lord Malmesbury lauds Pitt to the skies ; the next
he is accused of meanness and party spirit ; now Addington is
supposed to be dealing fairly, next day his whole policy is sneak-
ing and surreptitious. The other statesmen introduced are not
much more fairly dealt with ; their actions are not always stated
rightjy, and the notes of the Editor do not always set right
what is erroneous. On the whole, however, we are impressed
by the conviction that though Lord Malmesbury had learnt to
estimate Pitt's talents better than when he went, sixteen years
before, to the Hague, and though a strong personal regard had
taken place of that dislike which was then excited by his
reserved manner, yet that he was still far from appreciating the
integrity of this high-souled man, and gave him credit for a
wish to return to office in a somewhat underhand manner, of
which Mr. Pitt was altogether incapable. This seems at the
bottom of a most preposterous plot which was laid between
Lord Malmesbury and Canning, (with the aid, we are told, of
Lord Carlisle and Lord Granville Leveson, afterwards Lord
Granville,) by which Addington was to be induced to resign by
receiving an anonymous letter ' leaving his imagination to
* suppose signatures were more numerous and more tremendous
( than those you are sure of.' Vol. iv. p. 104.
We will give one or two specimens of the political gossip of
the day :
< Saturday, March 7, 1801, 10 P.M.
' From Pitt's letter, and from other circumstances and rumours, I
now am confirmed in my ideas that Pitt wishes to remain at the head of
administration ; and that if he does, he will remain with less power, but
with better and more sane judgment ; and the acquiring the last, will,
in my mind, amply balance the decrease of the first. He has discovered
himself, from what has past, to have an overweening ambition, great
and opinionative presumption, and perhaps not quite correct constitu-
tional ideas with regard to the respect and attention due to the Crown.
Possibly this is neither in his real character, nor even his real sentiments,
Tbut caused by listening to bad and silly advisers, and, above all, to an
Lord Malmesbury's Journal* 23
uninterrupted course of political prosperity (as far as related to his per-,
sonal administration), without a single check of adversity for nineteen
years. But whatever may be the cause, he has lost much of his popu-
larity, and of the public good opinion, from his conduct at this period j
and if he retains office, he will find his followers much diminished, and
by no means so inclined to vote implicitly with him as before.' Vol. iv.
p. 33.
All this is overturned in a letter from Canning, October 20,
1802. He says
1 That Mr. Pitt told him that he went out not on the Catholic
Question simply as a measure on which he was opposed, but from the
manner in which he had been opposed, and to which, if he had assented,
he would, as a minister, have been on a footing totally different from
what he had ever before been in the Cabinet, This obliged him to
resign ; but as his sincere wish was, that his going out should neither
distress the King nor the country, he had required no one to follow
him. Those who did, did it voluntarily, regardless of his desire ! .... It
had been his anxious hope and endeavour to leave behind him such a
ministry as would be most agreeable to his Majesty ; who, in all great
national points, would act as he had acted. It was to forward this, his
favourite purpose, that he had pledged himself, but himself simply, to
advise and support the present ministry,'
Then follow the notes of a personal conference.
' CANNING. " Is not then the time arrived when you, Pitt, are called
upon by the strongest and most paramount of all duties to come forward
and resume your position?" PITT. "I do not affect to deny it ; I
will not affect a childish modesty ; but recollect what I have just said,
I stand pledged : I make no scruple of owning that I am ambitious ;
but my ambition is character, not office." .... CANNING, " I repeat,
is it not your duty, after the sentiments which you have avowed, and
the danger you admit the country to be in, to require this release from
him (Addington) f PITT. "I cannot bring myself to do it. It is
impossible to prevent its wearing the appearance of caballing and in-
triguing for power. I may be overfeeling about character." ' Vol. iv,
pp. 75, 78.
Somewhat later we hear of the attempt made by Lord Melville
to induce Mr. Pitt to engage as Addington's equal in the ministry ;
a story told with little variation in the Life of Wilberforce.
1 Lord Melville came charged with a proposal from Addington for Pitt
to resume office Pitt and Addington to be the two Secretaries of State;
Pitt to have the nomination to one Cabinet, and one Privy Councillor's
office ; an indifferent person to be First Lord of the Treasury. (It is
thought Adddington had Lord Chatham in view for this, and had fixed
particularly on him to embarrass Pitt). Lord Melville himself (pro-
bably) First Lord of the Admiralty.
' Pitt rejected this offer the moment it was made him : said, so far
24 Lord Malmesburys Journal.
from even listening to any plan in which the person who was to be the
real and effective first minister was to be disguised or concealed, he
thought it indispensable that it should at all times, and in every admi-
nistration, be evident and manifest who this person was ; and that he
never would take ' part in any arrangement where this did not clearly
appear. That this alone would have induced him to set aside the pro-
posal he heard, but that it was inadmissible in every part, and not worth
discussion." VoL iv. p. 177,
Wilberforce, speaking from Pitt's own account of the inter-
view* as it appears, which Lord Malmesbury did not, adds,
f Dundas saw it would not do, and stopped abruptly. " Really,"
( said Pitt, with a sly severity, and it was almost the only sharp
* thing I ever heard him say of any friend, " I had not the
* curiosity to ask what I was to be." ' Wilberforce^ s Life, vol. iii.
p. 219.
'Lord Pelham acceded to all I said, promised to mention it to
Addington ; but added, that whenever any one talked to him on sub-
jects he did not understand, or was not used to, he always got rid of the
subject, by telling some ban mot or dull joke of Halsell's, when he was
Speaker.' Vol. iv. p. 197.
Alas, for human reputation, that poor HatseWs jokes should
not only be voted dull, but that his Precedents should not suffice
even to make his name known to the new race of statesmen !
Lord Malmesbury's early knowledge of Spain, from his official
residence there, enabled him to detect some mistakes in our mode
of supporting that country during its struggle with Napoleon.
' The character of the Spaniard is to let everything be done for him,
if he finds any disposed to do it, and never to act till obliged to do so.
This has appeared, and will appear in every event of the contest with
France. Not foreseeing this, and placing an implicit confidence in the
first two deputies who arrived from Grijon (in Asturias), we have, by
wishing to do too much, injured the cause. I at once saw what they were.
Materasa (a Viscount), a young, raw Asturian Hidalgo, and Don Diego
de Vega, an Asturian attorney, both, I dare say, well-meaning and
well-thinking, but of no consequence. In fact, Asturias is a province
that is of as little consequence with reference to the kingdom of Spain,
as Glamorganshire is to England.' Vol. iv. 407,
We cannot give the noble editor equal credit for ' seeing at
once ' the purport of another passage of his grandfather's journal,
in which Spain is mentioned.
' That Spain was completely subservient to France, and that Buona-
parte should think the Spanish, by going to war with us, would be
more useful for his purposes than the tribute he now received. This
would happen.' Vol. iv. p. 312.
We venture to amend, without professing that we have the
Lord Malmesbury 's Journal. 25
sanction of any other codex than that which we suppose is in
the present Lord Malmesbury 's bureau :
' That Spain was completely subservient to France ; and that if
Buonaparte should think the Spanish, by going to war with us, would
be more useful for his purposes than the tribute he now received, this
would happen.'
Lord Malmesbury wrote sense always sometimes English.
We will close with one further observation, that these jour-
nals show the wisdom of those attempts at peace which were
frequently made during the earlier part of the revolutionary war,
and which issued in the short peace of 1801. These conciliatory
measures were commenced by Pitt in 1795, in the very autumn
after he had opposed the motion of Wilberforce for a negotiation
with France. They lasted, with various intermissions, till the
Peace of Amiens. Neither from them indeed, nor from the
Peace of Amiens, was any solid or lasting quiet to be expected.
But they proved to the nation at large the nature of the struggle
in which we were engaged. They showed the real objects of the
enemy the internecine nature of his assaults and that our only
safety was in victory. This it was which bound together the whole
people of England as one man. The last years of the war there-
fore were eminently popular. And when it pleased God to set
a hero at the head of our armies, by whom the patriotism of our
statesmen and the valour of our soldiers were duly improved,
then it was that those great events succeeded one another in
rapid career, which made the last war so glorious to England,
and so imperishable a portion of the history of the world.
26
ART. II. English Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
London: Burns. 1845. Pp. 362.
THE ' Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century' appear, in
these Notices, in a shape which particularly suits them, and brings
them out. A more unpretending, solid little book we never
saw ; its plainness, at the same time, bearing the stamp of true
elegance and perfect taste. It reminds us of the manners of a well-
bred person in society, with their rigid exclusion of all officious
display. It presents a great contrast in this respect to the tone
in which modern religious biography has been often conducted.
There is no introduction of set phrases and forms of speech,
such as come in at certain turns in many books of this class, and
which may be anticipated with almost unerring accuracy. There
are no reflections introduced for their own sake no interpola-
tions bearing upon things in general : there is no filling up and
rounding off with extraneous subjects. The writer-* we detect
a female hand pursues her own even course, and has the cha-
racter she is describing always close to her. She draws it out
with simple effect, and we have the character only before us,
and see nothing of the hand which is drawing it. She maintains
just that quiet and natural tone which is so desirable in this
department, and sets us completely at our ease as to the reality
of what we are reading about. The persons we feel sure were just
the persons that are here described. For any influence that a
book of this class is to have, it is evident how important an im-
pression this is to produce. The mind cannot leave these pages
and think it has been looking on a picture. It has come into
contact with real persons, and seen religion in living practical
form before it. A calm reality pervades the whole book. The
writer sympathizes with her characters ; her own mind uncon-
sciously mingles with them ; and she puts them before us with
the quiet self-possession of a person who is describing tempers
and forms of religion which she understands, and to which she
feels an assimilation,
To any one, then, who may wish to know what the internal
domestic religion of good Church-people in those times was, this
little book will give the information wanted. It presents, within
a small compass, the state of religion in our Church, as the teach-
ing of the Caroline divines had moulded it. It is a picture of
the domestic, retired, interior Church of England of that day.
It is confined, indeed, to one sex ; and so far is a partial picture.
Churchicomen of the Seventeenth Century. 27
But there is quite enough in it to show what the religious
standard of the day was.
There is one reason in particular which makes us glad to see
such a book as this. There is a popular impression respecting
these times, which meets with a strong and somewhat irresistible
answer in it. There is a popular impression that the Church
religion of these times was a formal and secular one, that the
Puritans were the only persons of vital and spiritual religion, and
that Church-people did little more than stand up for a formal
ceremonial, and a stiff liturgical routine. The Church reli-
gion of the Caroline times and the ' high Churchmanship ' of a
later date has been all put together under one head, and the
same charge has served for both. And persons, in thinking of
this period, have before them a compound image of ambitious
prelates and rubrical innovations on the one hand, and balls and
masks, and Cavalier revelling and dissipation, on the other. To
the Church has been assigned the worldliness and pomp of the
age, and to the Puritanical party the religion. Even moderate
and impartial minds are ready to make the concession, and to
allow that, though Charles had the best cause, the opposite side
had the best men. It is, indeed, easy to see how prominent a
feature the gay profligacy of the Cavaliers must be when people
only see that one feature, and see nothing else. The faults in the
Royalist party were of the more open and palpable sort, such as
catch the eye readily. And thus persons go off with an image
of a gay Royalist Court, and a dashing Royalist camp, and
Cavaliers with white feathers and prancing steeds, in their heads,
and think they have got at the state of religion on the Church
side, and fix the Church's standard accordingly.
It must be on some such very superficial view as this that the
idea we are alluding to is formed, for there is literally no reasonable
ground whatever for it. It stands refuted the very first time
that we allow our eye fairly to rest on the plain facts of the
case as respects these times. What are the very first names
that come across us in reading of those times of what do our
most familiar Church names remind us, but of men who lived
lives of unwearying self-denial and aspiring devotion ; men who
watched, fasted, and prayed night and day ? George Herbert
and Nicolas Ferrar, Hammond and Sanderson, Morton, Thorn-
dike, Ken, and many others, may have pursued a line of devotion
with which many cannot sympathize, but that they were men of
an intensely devotional spirit appears to be a simple fact, which
any dissenter even must allow who knows anything about them.
From what quarter do our warmest books of devotion come, our
most searching guides to conscience, the loftiest and most ambi-
tious calls to the life spiritual, but from this ? Men judge from
28 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
the particular stamp of high Churchmanship which the last
century produced, a stamp which had more of the Establishment
than the Church in it, as to the necessary tendencies of high
Church religion itself; and on this a priori view, imagine the
Church form of religion to be necessarily the cold and dry one,
and the dissenting the warm and spiritual one. This is simple
imagination. The matter of fact is quite otherwise. The devo-
tional line of the Church at the time we are speaking of was
most remarkably warm, fervent, ardent ; indeed, to use the com-
mon phrase, most spiritual. The Puritans had their peculiar
style of spirituality the Church also had hers. Look, we say
again, at the books of prayers, and rules of devotion and
charity, which proceeded from the Church minds of that age :
look at the whole view they take of what the Christian life is,
and see if you can accuse it of being over lax and cold, too easy,
and self-indulgent. We hardly think you will. The Church
did not cultivate puritanical indeed, but it nevertheless culti-
vated Catholic, spirituality.
The little book before us takes us out of the noise and bustle of
public scenes, and introduces us into the interior of society, and
into the private life of religious families of that day. When
persons judge of a whole state of things from one or two super-
ficial, noisy, showy, circumstances, they are going at haphazard.
Grant that a Royalist camp did not as what camp in the world
ever did? present an exhibition of strict religion: a Royalist
camp was only one external, accidental concomitant of the Church
cause then. It was only one mixed, fragmentary, evanescent
feature in a whole course of events. The Church and her chil-
dren had their own line, and their own way of going on, before any
Royalist camp was in existence, and were not interfered with by
it. What has the state of religious feeling in the interior of
society, in the common, every-day domestic walks of life, to do
with such a casual, secular exhibition as it ? The sphere of
quiet, ordinary life is, of course, the quarter we should turn to,
to form a judgment of what the Church of that day was. That
is the sphere in which her teaching works, and there it is that
we must look for the fruits of her teaching. There we see her
efforts, her wishes, her standard reflected. The course of private
life the tone of private society what people do at home, in
their towns and villages give the substantial Church of the day.
Quiet, ordinary life is the substance of the Church. There may
be stirring, bustling scenes going on which history takes more
notice of; but to form our judgment from such, is deliberately
to judge from an accidental excrescence, instead of the body
itself; to go off at a tangent, and overlook, and simply pass by,
the main field of inquiry. We are not saying that the public
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 29
manifestations of the Royalist party, whether in Court or camp,
were at all worse than those of the Puritans, for we think quite
otherwise ; but we do not enter upon this question : we simply
object to either side being judged of from such evidence. Let all
religious sides and all parties stand or fall by what they do upon
their own ground, and let them be judged of from the tone of
their ordinary teaching. Let the Church and the Puritan form
of religion, respectively, be judged of from the religious]characters
that each produces and cherishes within its own bosom, and let
us look simply to the height of the standard that each naturally
aspires and attains to.
These little ( Notices' do an important service in bringing us
back to this point. They bring the question to an issue upon
its own proper basis : they bring us back to the interior of our
Church, and show the solid substratum of religion upon which
she rested, the practical, devotional, high spiritual aims which
she cultivated within her fold, in her ordinary field of influence ;
the internal, individual, Christian life to which she brought her
favoured children. Let us hear no more of Cavaliers that
were very dissipated, and Court ladies that were very worldly
and gay, as if such facts as these settled the question. We are
now upon our proper ground ; we have now the natural sphere
of Church influence, the natural standard of her religion, be-
fore us. Let us see what it was. We are far, indeed, from
supposing that such examples of devotion as we see here are
average ones. Of course they are not. If they had been, they
would not have been recorded. The average tone of a religious
body is always a good way below that of the recorded specimens.
Very good people are never very common ; and it is only a cer-
tain proportion, all the world over, that arrive at anything like
high religion. But such instances show the spirit of the body
that they belong to ; they indicate an aim, a direction, a ten-
dency in the religion of the day. They show what the Church
aimed at producing, the object she had before her, and the form
and mould of her religion.
The religious characters that we here come across are cast in
a particular mould, we say. This is a point which must be
remarked on ; for it strikes one every page that we turn over.
Everybody will see a marked distinction, in tone, feeling, reli-
gious cast of mind, between them and pious dissenters. They
belong evidently to a different school to what the latter do.
Before entering into any comparison of the merits of the two,
this fact is obvious at starting. The two classes are cast in two
respective moulds, and it is as easy to tell a Church saint from a
puritan one, as it would be to tell one species in natural history
from another. The former have their mode of thinking and
30 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
acting, and the latter have theirs ; the one have Catholic spiritu-
ality, the other puritan.
It is very difficult to draw out and express, in positive words,
in what this distinction consists ; so much of it lies in a name-
less, subtle, pervading element which runs into every act, and
conies up everywhere, and makes itself felt, rather than seen.
We are always touching upon it, and feeling a bottom, as it
were, underneath us ; but it does not come up to the surface,
and meet our analytical eye. To describe it, however, vaguely,
and in some of its scattered features, the Church character, we
should say, had more shapeliness, or what is called formality,
more simplicity, more lowliness. Grace is the heavenly de-
velopment of nature. There is much nature in the Church cha-
racter: it is one which a pious pagan would naturally feel
himself drawn to, when he saw it, and would, in his degree,
understand. He would be very much at sea about a Puritan.
A certain kind of formalism goes along with this nature. For-
malism is true nature in our present state. When do we go on
most formally, and are made to do everything in a definite,
absolute way most, but when we are children ? And we are
all of us children in religion. It is thus a great part of the
Catholic ethos to express itself formally, i. e. definitely, in
particular stated acts and duties ; to have times and seasons for
doing everything. It chooses evening, morning, and midday;
or seven times a day some definite number of times for
prayer. It has formal postures, attitudes, signs. It leaves nothing
that it does to chaos and chance ; it shapes all that it does ; and
its inward feelings, workings of mind, yearnings, longings ; its
love, pity, benevolence, come out in express forms, and take cer-
tain definite lines of action. This seems to be the peculiar
tendency of the phrase ( good works,' and to many an obnoxious
one. A Catholic talks boldly and straightforwardly about good
works, with a round preciseness, as if he had a definite image
before his mind which he looked full at : a Puritan, or Evan-
gelical, does not of course positively condemn the expression,
but does not like it at the same time ; he avoids it, and will
allude to the subject under some vaguer phrase if he can.
Feelings of penitence, for example, come out in the shape of
penitential acts. They do not exhaust themselves in an internal
swell and roll of the mind, or evaporate in sensations : they come
into the outer world, and assume a visible and tangible form and
being, and become so many things done. Feelings of benevo-
lence and compassion take the same course. The Church
gives this whole class of feelings, all that brings us into
contact with our poorer neighbours, a particular place and posi-
tion in her ethical system. She makes the poor a definite
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 3 1
department for devotional love and regard, and assigns us our
duties to them with the same deep and serious formalism with
which she does everything else. Catholic devotion sets itself
tasks to do with respect to the poor, and attends particularly to
their bodily wants, to the visible and tangible circumstances of
their condition ; it heals their wounds, relieves their emptiness,
covers and warms them. ' Good works,' in the peculiar devo-
tional sense, are largely appropriated by this department of works
of mercy towards the poor. The feeling of compassion comes
out and expresses itself more, when it thus assumes visible shape
and substance : the moral yearning is more satisfied : love is
embodied and consolidated. This is the tendency of Catholic
ethics. We are made up of internal and external, have emotions
and sensations within, and have a visible world without us that
embodies these emotions, and gives them locality and form.
Catholic ethics cause a perpetual efflux out of the inner world
into the outer, and acts upon acts are so many perpetual, succes-
sive births in her system, just as the hidden virtues of the soil
come up and are embodied in the trees and plants which draw
them out. A religious life is thus a kind of ritual. It flows on
like a religious ceremonial, and turns vague feelings and impres-
sions into definite movements, acts, and observances.
But, however we may describe the difference between the
religious tone of Church-people and dissenters, that there is such
a difference is very apparent; and the general character and
point of the difference is pretty clear ; and we see it plainly
enough, though we may not be able exactly to analyze it. The
Church has her own form of the humble, penitential, submissive.
Her sweetness, her charity, her pity, her whole order of feelings,
are peculiarly her own, and bear the ecclesiastical stamp upon
them. She has an idea of goodness before her, which the other
communions do not even aim at. The genius of her ethics is
different from theirs. They rather deliberately avoid her mould ;
they do not see the point and virtue of it : they deliberately
argue against it, and have a positive counter-aim, which they set
up in contrast to it. They think the Church standard of the
religious temper a superstitious one : legal, oppressive, servile,
Jewish. They think her sadly deficient in the freedom which
the new law has introduced. They mistake her good works for
mere formalities, her love for romance, her subjection to authority
for superstition.
The characters before us remarkably illustrate this Church
form of religion that we speak of. We observe that a short
notice of this little book in a latitudinarian journal, speaks of a
'bland fanaticism' which pervades it. The criticism coming
from a latitudinarian quarter, is not unfair or unexpressive ; and
32 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
with the proviso, that we attach our own meaning to fanaticism,
and separate the real thing they mean from the objectionable
name they give it, we will allow it to stand. There is a good
deal described here, a good deal in the course of life and religious
tone of the subjects of these notices, which must appear 'fana-
ticism' to many eyes. It is not dissenting * fanaticism,' but
that of a very different school. But it is time we should give a
few extracts from the book, and the reader may apply for him-
self what we have said, as we go along.
Lady Falkland is perhaps one of the most striking characters
drawn. Her extreme contemplativeness, seclusion, melancholy,
tender scrupulousness, refined asceticism, make us almost think
sometimes that we must have dipped, by mistake, into the life of
some Roman Catholic saint; and seem rather the accompani-
ments of the veil and cloister, than to belong to the mistress of
a splendid household, and the mother of a family. Different
minds have very different internal dispositions. Lady Falkland's
melancholy was of that peculiar and dangerous depth which be-
comes a source of actual spiritual temptation ; and a life of most
extraordinary and scrupulous devoutness from her very child-
hood, did not prevent her from falling into the most miserable
thoughts about herself and her condition. She was tempted at
times almost to despair of her salvation. The storms swept over
her, and she recovered, and went on in her quiet, ordinary frame
of mind again. But she had always a tendency to take the over-
melancholy and dejecting view. And her saint-like delicacy of
conscience, strict watchfulness, and perpetual prayer, had not
their reward upon earth in the shape of that perfect serenity and
peace which some minds reap from such a life.
' " That her time might not be misspent, nor her employments tedious
to her, the several hours of the day had variety of employments assigned
to them ; intermixing of prayers, reading, writing, working and walking,
brought a pleasure to each of them in their courses," so that the day
ended too soon for all she had to do, and in her early youth she began
to abridge herself of her sleep, and was often at a book in her closet,
when she was thought to be in bed.
' Whilst she was still very young, she worked a purse to hold her
own alms, and would beg for money from her mother to fill it, as eagerly
emptying it again for the poor who came to her father's house, and who
seldom left it without alms from the young daughter, as well as from
her parents.
' She was at this time constant in her private prayers, and when
strangers occupied her own room, to which she commonly retired, she
would ask the steward for the key of some other room for that purpose,
at her hour of prayer. " How powerful with God the lifting up her pure
hands everywhere, in this her innocent childhood, was, soon appeared.
For while her piety and holiness was in this bud, a violent attempt there
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 33
was made to blast it. About the thirteenth year of her age, there was
a storm of temptation raised in her, and some arguments the tempter
had suggested, to drive her to despair of God's mercy towards her. But
God upheld this young twig against such a storm, which hath torn up
many a fair tree : for after some anguish of spirit, and patience in the
combat, and earnest prayers, God's grace was sufficient for her : and
surely it was not the strength of her hands at this age, but the pureness
of them, which prevailed for her.'
'After this conquest, her soul enjoyed much peace and tranquillity ;
she went on most cheerfully in holy duties, tasting much delight and
comfort in them, and her heart was at times so full, that out of the
abundance of it she would say, " Oh, what an incomparable sweetness
there is in the music upon David's harp ! Oh, what heavenly joy
there is in those psalms, and in prayers, and praises to God ! How
amiable are the courts of God's house ! how welcome the days of His
solemn worship !"' Pp. 2, 3.
The death of her husband was a devotional era in her life ; and
from that time she adopted a stricter rule, and considered that
her widowhood consecrated her in an especial way to religion.
' She then addressed herself to a divine of great eminence for piety
and learning, and from him she took directions for a more strict course
of life in this her widowhood, than she had hitherto pursued. Though
the greatest and most important part of her Christian work, was locked
up close within herself, and some of it carefully concealed for fear of
vain-glory, yet much of it appeared by the effects, and so came abroad
for the good of others.
' Her first and great employment, was to read and understand, and
then to the utmost of her strength to practise our blessed Saviour's
Sermon on the Mount, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St,
Matthew's Gospel ; and having read over a most complete, though
compendious Comment upon that Sermon, she set forthwith upon the
work of practising it, beginning with those virtues to which the Beati-
tudes are annexed.' Pp, 7, 8.
One of the Beatitudes is, ' Blessed are the merciful.'
' As to the poor at home, and strangers at the door, she was very
charitable in feeding the hungry, and refreshing the poor and weak ;
for clothing the naked, she might be sometimes seen going up and down
her house, begging clothes from her servants, which she repaid after-
wards with new, that the poor might not go naked or cold from her
door ; so that she was not only a liberal almoner to the poor, but also
an earnest solicitor for them. When it was objected that many idle and
wicked people were by this course of charity relieved at her house, her
answer was, " I know not their hearts ; and in their outward carriage
and speech, they all appear to me good and virtuous ; and I had rather
relieve five unworthy vagrants, than that one member of Christ should
go empty away."
' And as for harbouring strangers, the many inconveniences apt to
NO. XLIX. N.S. D
34 Churc/iwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
result from it could not deter her from entertaining them, sometimes
for several weeks together.
' She would also send plentiful relief to prisoners, and needy persons
at London and Oxford, with a strict charge that it should not be known
from whence it came ; and it was not till after her death that these
charities came to light.
' Nor was her mercifulness bounded within the limits of friends, but
extended to her enemies ; for when many of them were taken prisoners
by the king's soldiers, she consulted how she might send relief to them ;
and on the objection being made, that such an action would raise
jealousies in some minds of her loyalty to the king, she answered, " No
man will suspect my loyalty, because I relieve these prisoners, but he
would suspect my Christianity, if he should see me relieve a needy Turk
or Jew : however, I had rather be so misunderstood, (if this my secret
alms should be known,) than that any of mine enemies (the worst of
them) should perish for want of it." ' Pp. 8, 9.
The temper of meekness and peaceableness is sometimes
particularly attained by those who have extraordinary natural
irritableness.
' Her greater difficulty was with her affections ; she would often com-
plain that her natural temper inclined her to anger, and being so well
aware of it, she most diligently observed herself, and in a great measure
conquered that froward inclination ; the good measure of meekness in
this respect which she attained to, being the more commendable because
of the many difficulties she met with in the endeavour.
' As for peaceableness, as much as in her lay, she had peace with all
men ; she suffered herself to be defrauded and damaged in her estate,
rather than she would disquiet a debtor by suits at law ; for " peace is
equivalent," she said, " to the sum detained." Whilst she avoided law-
suits herself, she endeavoured also to make peace between her neighbours
by all her art and power. On one occasion, when she thought that a
contention was likely to arise about the choice of a parish officer, she
hired one herself, and so kept all peaceable and quiet.
' Thus she hungered and thirsted after peace, and after righteousness
too ; as the chased and wearied hart pants for the water brooks, so her
soul seemed to long after righteousness, frequently panting, " Oh why
am I not 1 ? oh how shall I be? oh when shall I be perfect, as my
Heavenly Father is perfect V '
f And for patient suffering : in the latter part of her life she was
seldom free from some trouble ; spiritual afflictions and sorrow, or bodily
infirmities, of weakness and sickness, or worldly losses in her estate ; one
or more of these, or the like, pressures were constantly heavy upon her ;
yet no impatience, and little disturbance could be perceived in her, but
when all these trials were at once present, her patience triumphed over
them all.
' Some persons thought her in love with suffering, when she refused
to pay contribution money against the king, and suffered her stock, of
great value, to be seized, rather than to pay some little tax, which was
Church women of the /Seventeenth Century. 35
demanded ; it seemed to such observers, that, not content with carrying
the cross if it was laid upon her, she went to meet it ; but she was
willing to suffer loss rather than blemish her obedience and loyalty, so
that till the king himself granted her an indulgence, she refused to pay
contribution to the neighbouring garrisons, which were against him.'
Pp. 11, 12.
In the midst of these self-mortifications, ' she bewailed her
* weaknesses and spiritual wants ; and when those about her
6 wished, as they sometimes did, that they were as forward in
' the ways of religion as they saw her, she would answer, " Oh
( ye are not so backward ! yet wish yourselves better I ye know
* not how vile and corrupt my heart is." '
Of her hours of private prayer, and the religious services in
her household, we hear
'With equal diligence she practised the duty of prayer enjoined in
the same sermon of our Lord, spending some hours every day in her
private devotions and meditations ; these were called by her family her
busy hours ; Martha's employment was her recreation, Mary's her busi-
ness.
' Her maids came into her chamber early every morning, and usually
passed an hour with her, when she prayed, catechised, and instructed.
To this were daily added the morning and evening prayers of the
Church, before dinner and supper ; and another form of prayer, together
with reading the scriptures and singing psalms, before bed-time,
' She charged her servants to be present at all these hours of prayer
if their business allowed of it, but never suffered any one to be absent
from all the services ; if she observed any such, she sent for them into
her chamber and prayed with them privately, making it a rule that at
least every morning and evening, every servant in her house should
offer the sacrifice of prayer and praises to God. Nor did she limit the
services of her house to her own household, but opened. her oratory to
her neighbours as freely as her hospitable hall.
' On the Lord's Day she rose earlier than on other days, but often
found the day too short for her private duties, and instructions of her
children and servants, so that she would sometimes rise on Monday two
or three hours before day-light, to supply what was left undone the day
before.
' In order also to prepare herself for the Sunday's duty beforehand,
she sequestered herself on the Saturday from company and worldly busi-
ness, and seldom came out of her closet till towards evening, when her
chaplain catechised, in addition to the usual service of prayer.
' She punctually observed the other Holy Days of the Church, and
after the public service, she released her servants to their recreations,
and the care of their own concerns, saying, " These days are yours, and
as due to you, as ordinary days to my employments." On these days of
rest, she went with her books to her unlearned neighbours, who were at
leisure to hear her read, whilst their plough and their wheel stood still.
D 2
36 Churcfiwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
c She strictly observed the Fasts of the Church, and such days as
were appointed for solemn humiliation, which her whole family, great
and small, observed after the pattern of the Ninevites. When the
calamities of the country increased, she often wished that lawful autho-
rity would appoint not only the second Friday, but the last Wednesday
in every month, to be kept solemnly throughout the land, that their
fasts might be doubled as well as their troubles.
' She exhorted all her servants to accompany her to the Sacrament,
and those who were prevailed upon, gave in their names two or three
days before, that she might instruct them herself, and obtain the help
of her chaplains to examine them and instruct them further ; for which
purpose, the day before their receiving was free from their ordinary
work. When they had received, she called them together again, and
gave them such exhortations as were proper for them.' Pp. 12 15.
A fresh affliction now came to quicken her, in the death of
f her young and most dear son Lorenzo.'
1 She wept and mourned all the day long, and at night also watered
her couch with tears, and weeping she would say, " Ah ! this immoderate
sorrow must be repented of, these tears wept over again !" Her quick
sense of displeasing God by extreme grief soon allayed its vehemence.
She retired into herself to hearken what the Lord would say unto her,
in this louder call of affliction ; and it seemed to be prompted to her
that she was not yet weaned enough from the things of this world, and
it was expedient for her that some of the worldly comforts she most
delighted in should be taken away, that her conversation might be yet
more spiritual and heavenly ; therefore this affliction seemed to call
her to a greater mortification to the world, and a nearer conformity to
Christ her Lord.
' But fearing that her sorrow for her son was still exorbitant, she
went again to ask counsel of her ghostly physician, the same eminent
divine, as it appears, whom she consulted after her husband's death.
She acquainted him with the violence of those fits of sorrow, which of
late had seized upon her for the death of her son, and he, by his good
counsel, with God's help, cured this new distemper of hers, prescribing
antidotes also to prevent a relapse into this malady of excessive grief.
' She returned home, confessing that this very affliction was most fit
for her, and that it should turn to her profit ; and, cheered by this con-
fidence, it was observed by those who saw her on her return, that a
remarkable change had come over her, as great as that which passed
upon Hannah when Eli promised a son in answer to her prayers.
* Thus God made the spiritual medicine she had received effectual,
and the antidote too, for while she lamented the excess of her grief, she
did not again give way to it. She used her newly-regained cheerfulness
in making resolutions of farther progress in holiness, and set about
running the last stages of her Christian race with greater speed than
any former ones. Yet, before she began upon the fulfilment of these
new purposes, she was tried by a fresh temptation ; she feared that her
repentance was not sincere enough to be acceptable to God, and reasoned
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 37
thus with herself, " My grief for my sins has not been so vehement as
that for my son's death ; I wept not so bitterly for them as I did for
that; and therefore my repentance is not acceptable." ' Pp. 18, 19.
Her son's death she took as another call to an increased strict-
ness, and was another devotional era in her life. 6 The vanity
' of apparel she had cut off long before, and after her husband's
( death, the richness of it too, and what she spared in this she
' bestowed upon the poor members of Christ. She now began to
' cut off all other worldly pomp ; she gave up that state which be-
f longed to her rank, in her house, in her retinue, and at her table,
' and took more delight in seeing her revenues spent among a
' crowd of alms-men and women at her door, than by a throng
( of servants in her house/ She now commenced a course of
deeper and more inward asceticism, and set herself new tasks,
and entered on new spheres of self-mortification. She set
earnestly to work to extinguish even the most latent tendencies
to selfishness, and she discovered a selfish principle lurking even
under the most beautiful and winning affections of our present
state. What people in general think they have not only a right,
but a positive call of duty, to indulge to the very full those feel-
ings which constitute the very morality and religion of the world
at large, she suspected, and saw a principle of evil lying underneath
them, like a snake in the grass. The sweet, overpowering fasci-
nation of the natural domestic affections was what she par-
ticularly set herself against. She looked upon it as a regular
temptation, and fought inwardly against it. The Church has
all throughout her course expressed especial mistrust of this
class of feelings, and cautioned her members against them.
They look so exceedingly amiable, indeed, that it appears posi-
tively harsh and forbidding to say anything in caution against
them : and it does undoubtedly require a certain real progress
in spiritual life to be able to mistrust them : it is a very testing
point as to persons' religious state of mind. But Catholic
spirituality is very determined on this head, and sticks to its
point. It penetrates through the surface, and sees evil where the
world does not see it. It mortifies nature even in her tenderest,
softest, sweetest part, and drives the knife's point into the full
bud of rich and fragrant life.
' She now severely undertook the mortification of her natural affec-
tion to her children and friends, saying to some of those who were
dearest to her, " Oh, love me not, I pray, too much ! And God grant I
never love my friends too much hereafter ; that hath cost me dear, and
my heart hath smarted sore with grief for it already." She resigned her
will and understanding, as well as her affections, more and more com-
pletely to the will, and to the wisdom of God. " Whatsoever comes
upon me," she said, " I will bear it patiently, because by God's will it
38 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
comes ; yea, I will bear it cheerfully, because by God's wisdom it is thus
ordered, and it will work (as all things else) for mine advantage."
' Therefore she considered the death of her husband, and of her son,
as real benefits to her, and would say, " I should offend not only against
free obedience and submission, but also against common prudence, if I
should wish my condition otherwise than now it is ; I cannot wish any-
thing so gainful and prosperous to me, as this, which my Heavenly
Father in His wisdom hath ordered for me."' P. 21.
*******
' The warning which she gave to young mothers, not to exceed in
fondness for their husbands and children, came suitably and affectingly
from her. " Oh, I have had my portion," said she, " of these very com-
forts, with the first, no one woman more ; but there is no lasting nor
true pleasure in them. There is no real comfort from any espousals
but from those to Christ." 'Pp. 28, 29.
A scheme was much in her thoughts, ( for providing places
( for the education of young gentlewomen, and the retirement of
' widows (as Colleges and the Inns of Court and Chancery are
' for men), in several parts of the kingdom ; she hoped that learn-
' ing and religion might nourish more in her own sex, by their
' having such opportunities to serve the Lord without distraction.
' This project might not have been beyond her reach to accom-
' plish, through the power and interest that she had with the
' great men of her day, but that the evil times disabled her.
( When she found herself unable to fulfil these designs for the
* good of the kingdom, she returned with fresh vigour to the
' care of improving herself.'
The accurate, definite way in which she sets about parts of
her spiritual progress is remarkable.
1 She undertook at the same time the difficult task of taming the
tongue ; and for this purpose refrained for a while from speech almost
entirely, then loosened it a little, with two cautions.
' First, that it should " never speak evil of any man though truly,
but only upon a design of charity, to reclaim him from that evil."
And because a vicious man is seldom reclaimed by anything said
against him in his absence, she gave peremptory charge to her tongue,
that it should never speak evil of any man, however notoriously wicked,
if he was absent and not likely to be amended by it.
1 The second caution her tongue received was, that " as much as was
possible, it should keep in every idle word, and speak out only that
which was to edification." So that in the latter part of her life she
seldom spoke but on subjects relating to the concerns of the soul,
seldom even with her friends and neighbours on any worldly matters.
She took the same care in writing as in speaking, and suffered not a
vain nor idle word to slip from her pen . . . .' P. 20.
Her exceeding scrupulousness and strictness extended to
everything, and indeed would have made life too difficult for
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
39
her, and her trial too harassing, but for the constant unbosoming
of her soul to her spiritual adviser, Duncan, afterwards her
biographer. ' If it be but a mote, may it not grow,' said she,
' to a beam in mine eye ?'
' Greedily aspiring after perfection, she feared the smallest errors ; and
if any of her scruples proceeded from her own carnal reason, or from
Satan, to disquiet her, yet even that poison she turned into honey, taking
occasion from those very scruples to be more exact afterwards in her life.
( " One while I fear, I indulge too much liberty to others, and too
little to myself; another while, that I am too strict to others, and too
remiss to myself; and therefore I mete not to others, as I mete
to myself. I multiply queries against myself, whether this duty
was well performed, or not ; this action lawful, or not ; that word or
silence, seasonable or not ; and for commerce and traffic with my neigh-
bours, whether this and that bargain were just, not prejudicing myself,
nor over-reaching them. And when I would give thanks for anything
well done, (through God's grace in me,) I think it might have been
better done, and that therefore my thanksgiving may be deferred."
' " Now, Sir, if these motions be from the Spirit of God in me, I must
hearken what the Lord God saith to my soul ; at my utmost peril it is,
if I receive not, and cherish not those motions : and if they be doubts I
raise of myself, they are not to be neglected, there is danger (my books
tell me) in that ; but if they be scruples, heeding them is dangerous :
so there is danger on every side." ' Pp. 31, 32.
Her meekness now increased ' till she was clothed with it as a
robe, covering her with the beauty of a meek and quiet spirit.
Her compassions, deep as they were before, grew more and
more tender, bringing tears to her eyes when she saw or heard
of distress, and opening her hand wide for the comfort of the
poor and needy. Where her hand of charity could not reach,
her feelings of compassion found their way ; and those who sat
with her at meals, saw the earnestness of her sorrow, when the
miseries of the Church and kingdom were the subject of con-
versation. She was almost pined with hunger, and faint with
thirst after righteousness ; ever and anon sighing, " Oh, that I
could attain unto it I Oh, that my ways were made so direct !"
It was usual with her at night to compose herself to sleep, saying
to her woman, not without some joy, " Well, now I am one
day nearer my journey's end ;" comforting herself, that when
her body should sleep in the bed of her grave, then the days
of sin would be finished, and then she should be perfect, as her
heavenly Father is perfect.'
1 Her humility in begging forgiveness from others was most singular ;
during the latter part of her life, she seldom slept till she had asked
forgiveness, as well as blessing, from her mother, that if she had in any
way offended her, she might be sure of her pardon.
40 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
c But that which more astonished the inmates of her house, was to see
this noble ladj begging forgiveness from her inferiors and servants, for
her angry words or chiding frowns towards them; and sometimes
asking their pardon when she had expressed no anger outwardly,
because, said she, "somewhat I felt within myself, too like anger
towards you, though I suppressed it as soon as I could." ' P. 24.
As her end approached, a wish to withdraw altogether from
the world, and live in religious retirement, became very strong
in her. ' She had resolved to get loose from the multitude of
* her worldly employments, and to remove from her stately
( mansion to a little house near adjoining ; and in that house
' and garden, with a book, and a wheel, and a maid or two, to
' withdraw herself from worldly business and unnecessary visits;
* and she took as great delight in planning this humiliation and
* privacy, as others do in advancement to honours and employ-
' ments.' Her death-bed was wonderfully calm and composed,
and seemed to come, as a recompense at last for all her long
sufferings, bodily and mental, as a perfect harbour and rest.
' After a while, .they who were about her, fearing the pangs of death
to be upon her, began to weep and lament ; the whole company grew
sad and heavy ; she only continued in her former condition, not at all
sorrowful, nor affrighted by these messengers of death. Then the
physician coming, and upon consideration saying, " Here is no sign of
death, nor of much danger; by God's help she may recover again;"
the whole company was very much comforted and cheered. She only
remained in her former indifferency ; no alteration at all could be
perceived in her, as if she had been the only party in the chamber
unconcerned in it ; neither fear of death could grieve nor trouble her,
nor hopes of life and health rejoice her ; " I have wholly resigned up
myself to God," said she, " and not mine, but His will be done, whether
in life or death."
' Thus she was brought from Oxford, home, and now being far spent,
and near her end, she could speak little, yet expressed a great deal of
thankfulness to God, who had brought her safe, to die in her own
house, among her dearest friends.
' But the tranquillity of mind, which she had in these her last days,
was most observable ; that the devil, who had so often perplexed her
with violent temptations, should now leave her to rest and ease : she
was wont to fear his most violent assaults on her deathbed, as his
practice commonly is, but now God, it seems, had chained him up, and
enabled her, by His grace, to tread Satan under her feet : and this
tranquillity of mind, more clearly now appearing at her death, than
ordinarily in the time of her health, is a great evidence to me, of God's
most tender mercy and love towards her, and of some good assurance,
in her, of her salvation.
1 This quiet gave her leave, though now very faint and weak, to be
most vigorous and most instant at prayers ; she calls for other help,
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 41
very faintly ; but for prayers, most heartily and often (in tliose few
hours she lived at home :) and after the office of the morning was
performed, she gave strict charge, that every one of her family, who
could be spared from her, should go to church and pray for her j and
then in a word of exhortation to them who stayed by her, saying,
"Fear God, fear God," she most sweetly spent her last breath j and so
most comfortably yielded up her spirit to Him who made it : and was,
we doubt not, admitted into heaven, into the number of the Apostles
and Saints of God, (on St. Matthias-day,) there to reign in the glory of
God for evermore.
* In which moment of her death, there seemed as little outward pain,
as inward conflict ; none could perceive either twitch, or groan, or gasp,
or sigh, only her spirit failed ; and so she vanished from us, as if God
had intended her here some foretaste, not only of the rest of the soul,
but also of the ease of the body, which she should enjoy hereafter in
heaven.' Pp. 35 37.
From Lady Falkland we turn to a very different person, one
who stands, indeed, in considerable contrast with all the other
characters in the book, Anne Clifford, the famous Countess of
Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery. Her exceeding vigour
and spirit, decision, loftiness, power of mind, talent for business,
and the like, combine most strikingly with a religion of stern
humility, and self-denial. ' She was absolute mistress of herself,
her resolutions, actions, and time,' says her funeral-biographer.
Her immense estates and numerous castles required a manage-
ment almost as difficult and irksome as that of a small kingdom.
She enters upon this department of labour in a kind of romantic
spirit of gratitude to her ancestors, and wish to restore the
monuments of their greatness. ' Six ancient castles, ample and
' magnificent, which her noble ancestors had built, and some-
* time held up with great honour to themselves, and security to
* their sovereigns, and hospitality to their friends and strangers,
' now by the rage of war, or time, or accidents, pulled or fallen
' down, or made uninhabitable scarce one of these six that
' showed more than the skeleton of a house her reviving spirit
' made these scattered stones come together, those ruins forsake
' their rubbish, and lift up their heads to tbeir former height . . .
4 Her friends advised her not to be so profuse in building, as they
' were well assured that, as soon as she had built her castles, Crom-
' well would order tbem to be destroyed, but she answered, " Let
' him destroy them if he will : but he shall surely find that as
' often as he destroys them, I will rebuild them, while he leaves
f me a shilling in my pocket." ' Her household arrangements,
manorial administration, and the whole business of her ample
domain, go on upon regular, inflexible, effective system ; and
order reigns with an imperious absoluteness over the whole
42 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
field which she embraces. She was inflexibly regular in her
residence; though * her journeys' to her different castles 'were
( often made in the winter, and over rough and untrodden
( mountain ways, when she assembled the labourers to act as
' pioneers, and rewarded them liberally for their work.'
'About three years before her death, she had appointed to more
from Appleby to Brougham Castle, in January. The day being very
cold, a frost and misty, yet much company coming (as they usually did)
to attend her removal : she would needs hold her resolution, and in her
passage out of her house she diverted into the chapel, (as at such times
she commonly did), and there, at or near a window, sent up her private
prayers and ejaculations, when immediately she fell into a swoon, and
could not be recovered until she had been laid for some time upon a
bed, near a great fire. The gentlemen and neighbours who came to
attend her, used much persuasion that she would return to her chamber,
and not travel on so sharp and cold a day \ but she having before fixed
on that day, and so much company being come purposely to wait on
her, she would go ; and although as soon as she came to her horse-litter,
she swooned again, and was carried into a chamber as before, yet as
soon as that fit was over, she went ; and was no sooner come to her
journey's end, (nine miles,) but a swooning seized on her again ; from
which being soon recovered, when some of her servants and others
represented to her, with repining, her undertaking such a journey, fore-
told by divers to be so extremely hazardous to her life, she replied, " She
knew she must die, and it was the same thing to her to die in her litter
as in her bed."' Pp. 253, 254.
The story of the f boon hen ' shows, in an amusing way, the
determination, mixed with good nature, which marked her terri-
torial government.
1 It was a custom on all her estates for each tenant to pay, besides
his rent, an annual boon hen, as it was called. This had ever been
acknowledged a just claim, and was common long after Lady Pembroke's
time on many great estates in the North, being generally considered as
a steward's perquisite. It happened that a rich clothier from Halifax,
one Murgatroyd, having taken a tenement near Skipton, was called on
by the steward of the Castle for his boon hen. On his refusal to pay it,
the Countess ordered a suit to be commenced against him. After the
suit had lasted long, it was carried in her favour, but at the expense of
200. It is said that, after the affair was decided, she invited Mr.
Murgatroyd to dinner, and drawing the hen to her, which was served
up as the first dish, she said, " Come, Mr. Murgatroyd, let us now be
good friends : since you allow the hen to be dressed at my table, we'll
divide it between us." ' Pp. 249, 250.
Her reading, information, and powers of conversation, exhibit
another department of her mind. ' " She had early," says Bishop
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 43
* Rainbow, " gained a knowledge, as of the best things, so an
e ability to discourse in all commendable arts and sciences, as
* well as in those things which belong to persons of her birth
' and sex to know. For she could discourse with virtuosos,
e travellers, scholars, merchants, divines, statesmen, and with
f good housewives in any kind, insomuch that Dr. Donne is
' reported to have said of this lady in her younger years, that
' she knew well how to discourse of all things, from predestina-
' tion to slea-silk." '
A self-denial and stern ascetic feeling appear in the coarse
dress of black serge which alone distinguished the mistress of so
many castles and the Queen of the North, from ordinary women ;
and the text, ( I keep under my body, and bring it into subjec-
tion,' is applied to her by her biographer, as the most charac-
teristic one he could think of for her. She knew how to deny
herself. He says :
' " Whilst treating her neighbours and dependents with generosity,
she was sparing, even to frugality, in her personal expenses. She was
simple and abstemious in her food, and accustomed "pleasantly to
boast that she had never tasted wine or physic/' '
He adds quaintly,
' " She much neglected, and treated very harshly, one servant, and a
very ancient one, who served her from her cradle, from her birth, very
faithfully, according to her mind, which ill usage, therefore, her menial
servants, as well as her friends and children, much repined at. And
who this servant was I have named before. It was her body, who,
as I said, was a servant most obsequious to her mind, and served
her four-score and six years.
' " The mistress of this family was dieted more sparingly, and I believe
many times more homely, and clad more coarsely and cheaply, than
most of the servants in her house. Her austerity and humility were
seen in nothing more than (if I may allude to Coloss. ii. 23) in ' neglect-
ing of the body, not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh? Whether
it were by long custom, to prove with how little nature may be content,
and that if the appetite can be satisfied, the body may be fed with what
is most common and cheap. She taught us that hunger and health
seek not delicacies nor fulness.
' " that those who think they cannot live except they fare deliciously
every day, would but make trial one year how they may preserve their
own health, and save their poor brethren from starving, (by hunger or
nakedness,) out of those superfluities and surfeits by which they destroy
themselves."' Pp. 245,246.
The luxury and dissipation of Charles the Second's Court
kept her from ever going there.
' After the Restoration, a lady of her neighbourhood conversed with
her upon their mutual joy at the King's return, and the splendour
44 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
which had attended his entrance to Whitehall, and wished that she
could go once more to London, and feed her eyes with the sight of such
happy objects, before she came back to her retirement ; but she answered
suddenly, " If I should go to those places now so full of gallantry and
glory, I ought to do as they do to ill-sighted or unruly horses, have
spectacles (or blinkers) put before mine eyes, lest I should see or censure
what I cannot competently judge of; be offended myself, or give offence
to others." 'P. 251.
But this strictness and severity was entirely without censori-
ousness ; and she accommodated herself to the manners of the
day, when her visitors came to her, saw herself surrounded
by gay dressers, without ever wishing to put her own ' serge"'
on them; and treated with indulgence and good nature the
frivolities from which she felt herself free. ' She never cen-
( sured others for greater gaiety of apparel, and when visitors
' came to her, after the Restoration, in dresses which other per-
6 sons considered affected and fantastical, the Countess only
' indulged in such pleasant reflections as rather gave pleasure
' than uneasiness to her visitors.'
The amiable side of her character shows itself in various
traits ; a deep love for her mother remaining as a kind of ruling
affection in her throughout life.
{ For her mother's memory she showed a tenderness which is re-
markable in contrast with the sterner features of her character. " She
never spoke of her but in terms of enthusiastic veneration, and usually
with the epithet 'my blessed mother.'" Whilst enumerating in her
memoirs the mercies which had been vouchsafed to her, she wrote
thus :
' " I must not forget to acknowledge, that in my infancy and youth, I
have escaped many dangers both by fire and water," &c., " and much
the better by the help of the prayers of my devout mother, who inces-
santly begged of God for my safety and protection." In another place,
after speaking with sufficient confidence of her own conduct during the
difficulties and troubles of her two marriages, she adds, " by a happy
genius I overcame all these troubles, the prayers of my blessed mother
helping me therein."
' In a letter addressed to her by George Herbert, after her second
marriage had connected her with his family, he wrote thus : " A Priest's
blessing, though it be none of the court-style, yet doubtless, Madam, can
do you no hurt. Wherefore the Lord make good the blessing of your
mother upon you, and cause all her wishes, diligence, prayers, and tears,
to bud, blow, and bear fruit in your soul, to His glory, your own good,
and the great joy of,
' " Madam,
1 " Your most faithful Servant in Christ Jesu,
' " GEORGE HERBERT.
'"Dec. 10th, 1631. Bemerton."
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 45
* Her mother died soon after her first marriage, having parted from
her seven weeks before, on the road between Penrith and Appleby; and
when she came in her second widowhood to live in the north, she
raised a pillar, still known in that country by the name of the Countess*
Pillar. It is decorated with her arms, a sun-dial for the benefit of
travellers, and the following inscription : " This Pillar was erected in the
year 1656, by Anne, Countess Dowager of Pembroke, &c., for a memorial
of her last parting, in this place, with her good and pious mother,
Margaret, Countess Dowager of Cumberland, on the 2nd of April, 1616.
In memory whereof she hath left an annuity of four pounds to be
distributed to the poor of the parish of Brougham every 2nd day of
April for ever, upon the stone table placed hard by. Laus Deo."'
T. 239 241.
There is something always interesting in the feeling which
brings rich and poor together ; but in such a person as Anne
Clifford it has a peculiar grace, because we know she must
have it in a high form, if she has it at all. There is remarkable
genuineness in everything she does, and we may trust it. When
the Countess of Dorset dines with her poor women at her
Alrnshouse, and treats them with affectionate familiarity, and
likes to be with them, and to see them about her, it is a sign of
a true religious humbleness of mind, which we cannot well mis-
take. Proud people, indeed, are often observed to have a ten-
dency to consort with their inferiors, and there is no relying on
the act itself as any sign : it entirely depends on who does it. It
is often hypocritically done ; but if Anne Clifford did it at all, she
would do it with heartiness and simplicity. * She took especial
' delight in the Almshouse which she founded near Appleby for
* thirteen poor women, to be called a mother, and twelve sisters, for
' which she provided an endowment, and the Service of the Church
* to be performed daily. With these sisters, as she liked to call
' them, she would sit and dine in their Almshouse, and invite
' them to dine and converse with her as freely as her greatest
' guests. This institution continued for more than twenty-three
* years under her care, she having with her own hands laid the
' foundation of the building, and brought its inhabitants to
( occupy their several rooms. She was not satisfied with her
' children and grandchildren when they came to visit her, if
* they did not pay their salutations at her Almshouse, and she
' commonly admonished them when they came from far to pay
* their duty to her, that before they came to her for a blessing,
' they should take the blessing of the poor, the Almswomen's
' blessing by the way.'
She was the same with her own household servants.
' " She looked on some (and possibly on some of the meaner sort
of her trusty servants, whose offices might occasion them nearer
46 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
attendance) to be such as Seneca allows them to be, good servants
and humble friends .... This heroic lady would (besides the neces-
sary discourses with them about her affairs) divert herself by familiar
conversations with her servants, in which they were sure (besides
other gains from her bountiful hands) to gain from the words of
her mouth something of remark, whether pleasant or profitable, yet
very memorable for Some or other occasion of life. So well did she
observe the wise man's caution, Eccles. iv. 30, Be not a lion in thine
house ; intimating that some are always in rage, and brawl and fright
their family from their presence; her pleasantry and affability made
their addresses a great part of their preferment.
' " I should now have done with that part of economy which respects
her servants, but that she had another way of building, as to them ;
namely, building them up in the most holy faith, and also giving them
their meat in due season, that meat which our Saviour told his followers
would not perish, but endure to everlasting life" ' Pp. 243, 244.
On her deathbed her real humility of character comes out
very strikingly. She expostulates with her servants for caring
so much for her, and being ' so passionately concerned about
her' about one who was f unworthy of their attention.'
' " She had brought into subjection all great thoughts, she had cast
down imaginations and every high thing, bringing into captivity every
high thought, and submitting the world and her soul to the obedience of
Christ ; her passions were mortified and dead before her : so that for
three or four days of her last sickness (for she endured no more) she lay
as if she endured nothing. She called for her Psalms, which she could
not now, as she usually had done, read herself, (the greatest symptom of
her extremity,) and caused them to be read unto her. But that cordial
(in which she had always taken particular delight) kept in Rom. viii.,
and in her heart ; this her memory held to the last, this she soon
repeated : no doubt to secure her soul against all fear of condemnation,
being now wholly Christ's, having served Him in the spirit of her mind,
and not loved to walk after the flesh, having (as often as she affection-
ately pronounced the words of this chapter) called in the testimony of
the Spirit to bear her witness, that she desired to be delivered from this
bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God ;
and so to strengthen her faith and hope by other comfortable arguments,
contained in the rest of that chapter, being the last words of continuance
which this dying lady spoke."
' The rest of the time she lay quiet, as if ruminating, digesting, and
speaking inwardly to her soul what she had uttered in broken words,
and so breathed her last without disturbance, on March 22d, 1675-6, in
the 87th year of her age.' Pp. 255, 256.
Lady Elizabeth Hastings is a person nearer our own times ;
she died in 1739, and the memory of the ( good Lady Betty' is
still kept up in the parts of Yorkshire where she lived. There
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 47
is exceeding grace and dignity about her : a perfect elegance
and polish of mind, which blends most harmoniously with her
devotional life. Her talents and high birth early made her a
well-known person. At the age of twenty-two, the mistress of
a large fortune, and the owner of Ledstone House, she stood out
more prominently before the world than ladies usually do ; which
must account for there being a description of her in the forty-
second number of the ' Tatler,' written in the style of the day,
but not unexpressively.
1 " Methinks, I now see her walking in her garden like our first parent,
with unaffected charms, before beauty had spectators, and bearing
celestial conscious virtue in her aspect. Her countenance is the lively
picture of her mind, which is the seat of honour, truth, compassion,
knowledge, and innocence.
' There dwells the scorn of vice and pity too.'
' " In the midst of the most ample fortune and veneration of all that
behold and know her, without the least affectation, she consults retire-
ment, the contemplation of her own being, and that Supreme Power
which bestowed it. Without the learning of schools, or knowledge of a
long course of arguments, she goes on in a steady course of uninterrupted
piety and virtue, and adds to the severity and privacy of the last age
all the freedom and ease of this. The language and mien of a court she
is possessed of in the highest degree ; but the simplicity and humble
thoughts of a cottage are her more welcome entertainments. Aspasia is
a female philosopher, who does not only live up to the resignation of
the most retired lives of the ancient sages, but also to the schemes and
plans which they thought beautiful, though inimitable. This lady is
the most exact economist, without appearing busy ; the most strictly
virtuous, without tasting the praise of it ; and shuns applause with as
much industry, as others do reproach. This character is so particular,
that it will very easily be fixed on her only, by all that know her ; but
I dare say, she will be the last that finds it out." ' Pp. 339, 340.
She entered into society, 6 but always with a guard upon her-
( self, which restrained her talents for conversation within the
( bounds of religion, charity, and courtesy, and enabled her
' dexterously and pleasantly to introduce religious subjects, in
' which was her real delight. At her table her countenance
' was open and serene ; her speech soft and musical ; her language
' polite, and seasoned with salt. In her drawing-room,' we
are told, f she maintained a visible pre-eminence above the
' highest and finest of her sex ;' and everything said of her tends
to raise a refined and lofty image of her. ' These praises were
* written after her death, for during her lifetime, her biographer
* says, that she could never endure to hear one word in her
* own praise ; " and when all the finest pens in the kingdom
48 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
c were invited to display her worth, the design miscarried,
purely by her own opposition." ' A true religious sweetness of
character goes along with these high traits
' If ever by speech, by manner or otherwise, she only suspected that
she had caused disturbance to others, she had no peace with herself
till she had restored their peace, and would often ask forgiveness from
those, even of her inferiors, who did not know what cause she had given
for asking it.' Pp. 348, 349.
' She watched strictly over her own heart to keep it clear of evil mix-
tures, and the taint of self-love, continually purifying her heart by acts
of faith in the Blood of her Redeemer, by rating her own righteousness
at nothing, by marking well, and daily committing to writing all her
little slips, and washing them away with tears of repentance, descending
even to vain imaginations, and such as happened in her sleep ; " and for
the expiation of slips, and things less than they, (besides prostrations, and
other humiliations and austerities)," shedding abundance of tears;
keeping her spirit moreover in a recollected state, and herself in readi-
ness to lie down in death, even in the midst of life and in firm
health.' P. 345.
Her alms and bounties were on an extraordinarily munificent
scale, including, among a vast number of other items, ( exhibi-
tions to scholars in the Universities.' At her death, she left a
manor to Queen's College, Oxford, { for maintaining and quali-
' fying five poor scholars, to be elected, by lot, from schools in
' Yorkshire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland.' She took a great
interest in the religious state of things at that University, and
was especially anxious to know about ( those young men at
' Oxford, among whom Methodism afterwards took its rise, and
' she hoped for much good from them whilst they avowed only
' sound religion as it is professed by the English Church ; but
' when new doctrines were introduced, and men were alienated
* from their settled Ministers, she was among the foremost to
6 remonstrate against them.' Persons were astonished at her
charities, and could not account for them ; but
' The simplicity of her own wants allowed her to give liberally; " for
they that walk in the spirit as she did, die progressively to every vanity,
and take coldness and indifferency at the things that are without them,
and do not mind the things pertaining to the flesh, none of its many
hurtful gratifications ; but chastise it, and keep it under, as knowing it
to be the seat of their most dangerous and deadly enemies." '
Pp. 346, 347.
When she had entered her fifty-fourth year, f she began to
e suffer from a tumour, produced by a hurt during her youth,
6 which till that time had caused her little or no disturbance, but
* then increased so dangerously that an eminent surgeon decided
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 49
c upon the necessity of a most painful operation for removing
' the evil.' The news was converted, by Lady Elizabeth, into a
of absolute spiritual comfort.
' " She would not wish to be out of her present situation for all the
world, nor exchange it for any other at any price." For indeed in her
former life she had often expressed some uneasiness that her own suffer-
ings, according to her reckoning of them, should be little or none ; and
one who had a station under her, not unskilled in this kind of know-
ledge, believed that the mighty torrent of sufferings which broke in
upon her at the last was for this purpose among others, to solace her
spirit, and to strengthen her assurance that she had eyery mark and
token of her favour and acceptance with God.' P. 350.
The disease, only repressed for a time by the operation,
returned with fresh malignity. ' For several months she was
6 unable to turn herself in her bed.'
' Yet still she had strength for prayer, and it appeared that not one
hour passed without it.
( She did all she could to comfort her household by her cheerfulness,
and grateful acceptance of their attentions to her, passing by mistakes
or neglects without notice.
' She wrote letters to her friends, or dictated them when she became
unable to write, full of sweet counsel, whilst many came to her house to
see her and hear her last words, for she engaged those about her in hea-
venly conference, as long as she had strength to speak, and preserved
her attention to the speech of others when her strength was gone.
' She delighted in the society of holy persons, and the mutual warmth
and light imparted by communion with them. The more need she had
herself of comfort, and even in the necessary increase of her expenses,
she sought the more to assist those in need, saying often to such as were
about her, " Where is there a poor member of Christ whom I can comfort
and refresh?" 'Pp. 354, 355.
Her deathbed gave her one of those miraculous manifestations
of the glories of the unseen world which have sometimes accom-
panied the deaths of great saints. After receiving the holy
Communion,
1 Her soul seemed to receive some of the happiness of heaven; her
eyes, though languishing under years and sickness, shone bright as
diamonds, (as one said, who was present) and all who looked on were
amazed at the transport now granted to her spirit. She broke out with
a raised accent into words such as these : " Lord ! what is it that
I see! Oh the greatness of the glory that is revealed in me that is
before me." And some time after she had so said, she fell asleep/
P. 356.
Our extracts have been longer than we intended, and we
must be bringing our article to a close.
The great cardinal Christian graces, humility, forgiveness
of injuries, prayer, self-mortification, charity, appear throughout
NO. XLIX. N.S. E
50 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
the characters in this book, in that marked, prominent, definite
way which we have spoken of as so peculiar to the Church
system. We can do no more than pass generally over the ground ;
but the general effect is striking ; and not the less so" from the
necessary uniformity which, more or less, attends such a display.
The characters go past us in a kind of procession. Of Lady
Maynard, says Bishop Ken, * Her oratory was the place where
' she principally resided, and where she was most at home. She
' had devotions suited to all the primitive hours of prayer ....
' and, with David, praised God seven times a day, or supplied
* the want of those solemn hours by a perpetuity of ejaculations,
( which she had ready to answer all occasions, and to fill up all
' vacant intervals ; and, if she happened to wake in the night, of
* proper prayers even for midnight she was never unprovided.
' To prayers she added fasting, till her weakness made it impos-
6 sible for her constitution ; and yet, even then, on days of absti-
' nence, she made amends for the omission by other supplemental
' mortifications.' Lady Mary Wharton ' constantly observed
' her designed and stated times for secret prayer : in which,
' if she were at any time hindered by entertainment of friends,
/ yet would she redeem time even from sleep.' Lady Halket
' was instant in her private humiliations, fastings, and prayers ;
* making the Psalms the subject of her meditation She set
' apart every Saturday (being the day of her husband's death)
6 for a day of retirement, devotion, and abstinence, and to be
f employed in examining and reviewing the past week.' . . . * She
6 divided the twenty-four hours into three parts, allotting five for
' devotion, ten for necessary refreshment, nine for business : her
( hours of devotion were from five to seven in the morning, from
6 one in the afternoon to two, from six to seven, and from nine
* to ten.' f Hearing it recommended, as a great help to a devout
' life, to meditate some time every day on the sufferings of Jesus,
( she immediately resolved on the practice of it ; and, for the
' better performance of it, she divided the history of His Passion
' into seven periods, with proper meditations for each day of the
( week.' Lady Jane Cheyne, ' from her youth to her death-
6 bed, failed not of prayer thrice a day.' Of Lady Sophia
Chaworth, it was said in her life-time, * She keeps invio-
* lably all the primitive hours of devotion, and bestows her
6 thoughtful and serious life between the strictest fasting (but
6 one spare meal in thirty-six hours ; not so much upon extra-
6 ordinary occasions), the most liberal alms to the sick, and
constant prayers.'
The Psalms occupy a large place in their devotions. Lady
Falkland, from ( the remembrance of those heavenly comforts
( which she had often received from the Psalms, used to recom-
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 51
* mend them as daily and hourly devotions to people ;' and she was
most acutely pained by the abuse of certain portions of them in
the mouths of the Puritans. f Oh, that sweetest harp sounds
' most harshly,' she would say, ' unless it be touched by pure
6 hands.' ( The best legacy I can leave you is my prayers for
6 you, and a verse of David's Psalms, which I command you,
f upon my blessing, to make part of your daily prayers,' is the
last speech of Lady Capel to her children. Lady Clifford
f took especial delight in the Psalter.' A great love of the
Psalms is indeed a feature which runs through all the devotional
characters of our Church ; and the practical use of them, as the
heart's perpetual liturgy, is one of those Catholic traditions
which we have reverentially preserved in our Church. The
place that the Psalter has in our Prayer-book is, of course,
sufficient to account for this without going further. And, indeed,
it is impossible to say how much we owe to this circumstance ;
how much of the old rule and spirit of devotion, which has been
kept up among us, is derived from our Psalter. Our Psalter is
a great fact in our Church ; one that, we see at a glance, must
have a great effect upon minds within her. The Psalms must in-
tone the minds that admit them : they are learnt by heart in child-
hood ; they are heard day after day ; and they become imprinted
on the mind, and act like a groove, in which its religious feelings,
consciously or unconsciously, run. The mind naturalizes them,
and expresses itself through the old familiar channel which its
religious reminiscences have established. The rhythm runs in
the ears ; the alternation beats ; the solemn and sweet flow goes
through the mind like a musical, ever-running stream. The
Church stands, as it were, on the banks, and the Psalms flow
past her, carrying a heavenly fascination with them a spell
upon the senses a calming, steadying, and moulding power over
the religious affections. Songs and hymns have, in all ages, had
this force. National poetry and music is wonderfully significant
of the nation's character, and reacts upon it : the Dorian flute
inspired and steadied the awful march, and ( insupportable ad-
vance,' of that heroic race to the ground of battle ; the Runic
rhymes formed the mysterious Scandinavian tribes. * Give me the
making of the national songs,' said one, ( and I will let who will
make the laws.' Rhythm and flow, uniformity of strain, whole-
ness and consistency, have, by the laws even of nature, a won-
derful charm over the human mind. The nation's lawgiver laid
down her system; her bard directed her feeling. The mind
listens to unity, and obeys the note that sounds again and again,
and does not vary : that is its oracle its guide : it is not ashamed
of an overmastering voice that acts upon it in this way. Religion
takes up the law. She has her bards and her legislators, her laws
E 2
52 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
and her songs : she has strains more powerful than Runic or
Doric, for her disciples. Christianity has the Psalter ; and the
Psalter the Church sounds unceasingly in her children's ears, and
educates them by it. The Psalter is a whole : one tone pervades
it from first to last ; one type of thought, and law of devotion.
The Christian type, no less effectual for the mystery and
reserve of an older dispensation, exists underneath all, and
forms the mind as it is again and again applied to it. The rhythm
wins ; the music tells at last : the tone of the Psalms sinks in,
and mingles with the soul itself, and becomes a part of a man's
religious nature.
( Since,' says Jeremy Taylor, in his preface to his ' Psalter of
* David,' ( according to the instruction of our blessed Saviour,
s God is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, no worshipping
' can be more true, or more spiritual, than the Psalter, said with
f a pure mind and hearty devotion.' He is writing during the
Troubles, and he describes how he takes especially to the
Psalms, to console him in his exile, and with the gloomy prospects
in Church and State before him. It is curious that even the
politician Clarendon does the same thing. The religious im-
pressions which his misfortunes bring on him take him imme-
diately to the Book of Psalms, from his mere habit of mind as a
Churchman. Jeremy Taylor collects a number of expressions,
from the Fathers, about the Psalms, and continues: 'But that
( which pleases me most is the fancy of St. Hilary expounding
' the Psalter to be meant " the key of David," spoken of by
( St. John, in his Revelation : and properly enough ; for, if we
6 consider how many mysteries of religion are opened to us in
' the Psalter how many things concerning Christ, what clear
' vaticinations concerning His birth, His priesthood, His kingdom,
' His death, the very circumstance of His passion, His resurrection,
( and all the degrees of His exaltation, more clearly and explicitly
* recorded in the Psalter than in all the old prophets besides,
( we may easily believe that Christ, with the key of David in His
( hand, is nothing else but Christ fully opened and manifested
( to us in the Psalms. tc Almost all the Psalms represent the
( Person of Christ," saith Tertullian. This key of David opens
6 not only the kingdom of grace, by revelation of the mysteries
* of our religion, but the kingdom of heaven too. As the ever-
' lasting kingdom is given to the Heir of the house of David, so
6 the honour of opening that kingdom is given to the first prince
( of the family ; the Psalms of his father David are one of the
6 best inlets into the kingdom of the Son. Something to this
' purpose is that saying of one of the old doctors : " The saying
( or singing of Psalms opens a way so wide for God to enter into
* the heart, that a devout soul does usually from such an em-
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 53
c ployment, receive the grace of compunction and contrition, or
f of understanding prophecies." Upon such premises as these,
' or better, the Church of God hath, in all ages, made David's
4 Psalter the greatest part of the public and private devotions ;
* sometimes dividing the Psalter into seven parts, that every
( week's devotion might spend it all. . . . But the practice of this
' devotion I derive from a higher precedent even of Christ and
( His Apostles ; for, before the passion, immediately " they sung
' a psalm."' It was part of David's Psalter that they sung ; it
' was the great Allelujah, as the Jews called it, beginning at the
* 113th Psalm to the 129th exclusively. This devotion continued
' with our blessed Saviour as long as life was in Him ; for, when
' He was upon the cross, He recited the 22d Psalm, " word for
' word," saith the tradition of the Church ; and that He began it,
' saith the Scriptures, " My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken Me ?" Thus it was said of Paul and Silas (Acts xvi.),
' " They prayed a psalm ;" and we have a copy left us of one of
* the prayers, or collects which they made out of the bowels of
* the second Psalm. David was God's instrument to the Church,
' " teaching and admonishing us" in psalms and hymns and spiri-
( tual songs ; and the Spirit of Truth was the grand dictator of
f what David wrote ; so that we may confidently use this devo-
' tion as the Church of God ever did, making her addresses to
' God most frequently by the Psalms ; so Prudentius reports the
' guise of Christendom :
" Te mente pura simplici
Te voce, te cantu pio
Rogare curvato genu
Flendo et canendo disciraus."
. . . f Against the example of Christ, if we confront the prac-
tice of Antichrist, nothing can be said greater in commendation
of this manner of devotion. For Bishop Hippolytus, in his
Oration of the End of the World, saith that in the days of
Antichrist, " Psalmorum decantatio cessabit," they shall then
no more use the singing or saying of Psalms. Which when I
had observed, without any further deliberation, I fixed upon
the Psalter as the best method against him; whose coming,
we have reason to believe, is not far off; so great preparation
is making for Him.'
Our Church's use of the Psalms is a point in which she comes
into remarkable contrast with dissenting bodies. Dissenting
bodies do not, that we ever heard of, make any use whatever of
the Psalter, of the kind we are mentioning. 1 They regard the
1 Of course, we mean the Psalms chanted, the only way in which they can be
realized. And this we say, bearing in mind that anomalous body, the Irvingires,
among whom, though the Psalter is daily used, it is significant that it is the (com-
paratively) inadequate Bible version.
54 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century*
Psalter, of course, as a part of the Bible, and respect it accord-
ingly, and quote texts from it, as they would from other parts
of the Old Testament. But the particular view of it which
makes it part of the regular Christian task of devotion, got off
by heart, and always ready to be said the liturgical view of the
Psalter they do not seem to have any idea of. It is no part of
education with them. It comes in in the metrical guise, occa-
sionally, and in common with their other hymns for public
singing ; but the Psalter itself is not used ; as a Psalter it lies
dead in their Bibles, and is no practical and familiar strain with
them, as it is with Church people.
To go to another feature the charity and attention to the
poor we have described here, is of a particularly practical, solid,
and circumstantial kind. We often hear this part of charity
undervalued, and made little of, as a part of religion, in compa-
rison with attention to their spiritual wants. There is some
plausibleness, argumentatively speaking, in the view : because it
is impossible to deny that to the persons themselves we attend
on, their own spiritual wants are of more consequence than their
temporal ones. But if it is meant to say that our charity is
more tested by talking to poor people than by feeding and
nursing them, that we entirely deny. The poor, of course,
should and must be talked to ; but the proper natural evidence
to give of our sincerity and wish to do them good in this way,
is to show sympathy with their external wants. The visible is
the test of the invisible. * He that loveth not his brother
whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not
seen?' The wants that we see are the types of the wants
unseen. The visitor of the poor has a regular legitimate part of
his religious nature appealed to by the external misery and
helplessness of the class. If he does not respond to that appeal,
he fails in the necessary ordeal which his charity has to undergo.
The visible and tangible should impress and unfold him. Chris-
tian charity meets the facts that it comes across, and responds
to phenomena, just as any one of the senses is affected by its
proper object encountering it. The charity which is moved
and touched by the wants of nature, is the only charity which
really goes farther, and really solidly desires to lead its objects
to heaven. The principle is the same on which we must
wish to do either. The view of spiritual attention to the
poor, as put in contrast with sympathy for their physical
wants, is an unreal one. It evades and leaps over the test of
what is solid charity, and elevates itself, and is high above
the earth at once, before it has any real ground to stand
upon at all. An airy delusive exhibition of the spiritual is
then the result ; and artificial phantasmagoria of Christian
love, instead of the natural solid substance, feelings that are not
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 55
felt, and sympathies without heart, mock the poor like a
nightmare.
There is a definiteness and solidity with which these good
Churchwomen go about their ministrations in this department,
which contrasts strikingly with such a view. The flesh stands
out very prominently in their system of charity ; they do not
evade it : they touch and handle, and dress and console it in a
hundred ways. Lady Maynard's
' " charity made her sympathize with all in misery, and besides her pri-
vate alms, wherein lier left hand was not conscious to her right, she was
a common patroness to the poor and needy, and a common physician to
her sick neighbours, and would often with her own hands dress their
most loathsome sores, and sometimes keep them in her family, and would
give them both diet and lodging till they were cured, and then clothe
them and send them home, to give God thanks for their recovery, and if
they died, her charity accompanied them sometimes to the very grave,
and she took care even of their burial She would by no means endure
' that by the care of plentifully providing for her children, the want and
necessities of any poor Christian should be overlooked, and desired it
might be remembered that alms and the poor's prayers will bring a
greater blessing to them than thousands a year.' Look abroad now in
the world, and see how rarely you shall meet with a charity like that of
this ' gracious woman,' who, next to her own flesh and blood was tender
of the poor, and thought an alms as much due to them as portions to
her children.
' " To corporal alms, as often as she saw occasion, she joined spiritual,
and she had a singular talent in dispensing that alms to souls ; she had
a masculine reason to persuade, a steady wisdom to advise, a perspicuity
both of thought and language to instruct, a mildness that endeared a
reproof, and could comfort the afflicted from her own manifold expe-
rience of the Divine goodness, and with so condoling a tenderness, that
she seemed to translate their anguish on herself." ' Pp. 137, 138.
Lady Halket's
' charitable disposition led her early to apply herself to the study of
physic and preparing medicines, which might be useful in common cases
of illness and of accidents, especially for the benefit of the poor.
' " Her first notable cure was on a poor maid, whose hand was in a very
dangerous state, having five tents in it, occasioned by a thorn in the
lowest joint of her forefinger: her mother dissuaded her from meddling
with it, believing the maid would lose her hand; but she, confidently
relying on the blessing of God, used her endeavours with such success,
that the patient did perfectly recover without any blemish. This cure
she recorded, blessing God for it, as an encouragement which confirmed
her in the resolution to serve poor distressed persons in this manner, and
as a fresh instance of the comfortable truth that God is the hearer of
prayer : upon which she resolved in all difficulties to make her requests
known to Him, and to depend on His blessing. This was her constant
56 Ckurchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
practice in administering to sick persons, that she begged God's direction
what to prescribe, and His blessing on it."' Pp. 152, 153.
# * # # *
' " In the summer season she vied with the bee or ant in gathering
herbs, flowers, worms, snails, &c. for the still or limbeck, for the mortar
or boiling pan, and was ordinarily then in a dress fitted for her still-
house, making preparations of extracted waters, spirits, ointments, con-
serves, salves, powders, &c., which she ministered every Wednesday to a
multitude of poor infirm persons, besides what she daily sent abroad to
persons of all ranks, who consulted her in their maladies."' P. 196.
Forgiveness of injuries is another department of charity, which
is pursued and cultivated in a definite, solid way, as a grace of
itself. They do not leave things to chance. They set them-
selves particular tasks ; they have definite spiritual aims. The
Church has always especially insisted on forgiveness of injuries,
as a test^ of her members ; and the feature comes in very
strikingly often here.
' " And now, after all these great truths," ' says the biographer
of one of these ladies, ( " one grace I must add, greater than
' all I have hitherto mentioned, and it is her humility; she was
' so little given to talk, and had that art to conceal her goodness,
( that it did not appear at first sight, but after some time
( her virtue would break out, whether she would or no ; she
* seemed to be wholly ignorant of her own graces, and had as
' mean an opinion of herself, as if she had had no excellence
' at all ; like Moses, her face shined and she did not know it." '
It is the best kind of humility which hardly knows itself to be
humility. It is really refreshing to see it. It is the crowning
trait, in fact, of a character, wherever we see it, particularly in
religious characters. Religious characters, if we may say so,
even want it more than others; and its effect is delightful in
proportion to its importance as a desideratum. Religious cha-
racters we use the expression in a wide sense are apt to fall
into the self-contemplative frame : and if they have high thoughts
and feelings, so much the more so. Their very spiritual aspira-
tions are a danger to them in this way. They invert the mind
upon itself, and it thinks a great deal, and of what it does, and
what it feels. In short, religious thinking has a tendency to
make persons conceited. And a more latent, disguised form
of this often exists, where we do not see the fault definitely
in itself, but only in a variety of swelling, bulging excrescences
upon the character which it throws out. It is impossible
not to see how much self-contemplativeness has eaten into
and marred the piety of dissenting bodies, however real and
sincere. Look into the lives of their recorded pious characters,
and you will see what we mean. It seems to be the peculiar
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 57
grace of Church -religion to develop without this alloy, and not
to make a person's religious aspirations stand in the way of his
simplicity; but to allow people to unite the greatest heights
of the spiritual, with the unaffectedness of the most common-
place life.
One word on an important point of spiritual discipline to
which religious minds of this day subjected themselves. It is a
point so completely forgotten at the present day, and which has
been suffered to remain obsolete so long, that we are aware there
is a considerable difficulty in recurring to it, even in the way of
mere allusion, as we do now. It meets us, however, so promi-
nently in the characters before us, that we cannot avoid mention-
ing it ; and mention it is all we shall do at present. We refer
to their practice of consulting spiritual guides. Jeremy Taylor
alludes to it as common among religious persons then, and insists
strongly on it as the substitute for the want of the Church's
public discipline. He seems to give up the former very
much, and throws the Church on the system of * spiritual
advisers,' as the practical line she was to take. ( Because piety
6 hath suffered shipwreck,' he says, ( and all discipline hath been
* lost in the storm, and good manners have been thrown over-
' board ; the best remedy in the world that yet remains, and is
f in use amongst the most pious sons and daughters of the Church,
' is that they should conduct their repentance by the continual
' advices and ministry of a spiritual guide.' The minds we here
come across seem to make this a part of their discipline, and we see
it entering regularly into the practical religious system of the day.
Some spiritual adviser, who is adopted and consulted as such, who
knows the person's whole state of mind, has cases of conscience
put before him, gives directions, and answers doubts and scruples,
is almost always mentioned, whenever the Notice at all enters
into biographical details. Nor does it come in as anything un-
common and out of the way ; it is mentioned simply as a common
fact would be, as if it were part of an order of things. We are,
of course, speaking of religious minds such as those recorded here,
and not of common ones. Such seem then to have had their
spiritual advisers, to whom they opened their consciences,
confessed their faults, and attended for direction. Nor does
the practice present itself simply as a disciplinarian one, but
rather as a source of comfort and assistance. It is obvious how
much, for example, a mind like Lady Falkland's would have
suffered without such help and guidance. It was just the help
she wanted, and she threw herself unreservedly upon it. It is
her spiritual adviser to whom we are indebted for the picture
of her mind, which has been transmitted to us. ( She addressed
* herself to a divine of great eminence for piety and learning,
58 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
' after her husband's death,' and from him took directions for a
f more strict course of life in her widowhood, than she had
* hitherto pursued.' ' Her zeal in the work of self-examination,
( her strictness with herself, and fear of offending, sometimes
f produced doubts and scruples : and when troubled by them,
f she seldom trusted her own judgment, but consulted with
' learned divines, and when she met with any one of learning and
' piety, she proposed her cases of conscience, and asked for
( answers. On these occasions she would dispute against herself
* very sharply, but when her objections had once been answered,
6 and she was satisfied, she submitted cheerfully, and ordered
f future practice accordingly.' On her son's death, as she
had done on her husband's, ( fearing that her sorrow is ex-
' orbitant, she goes to ask counsel of her ghostly physician.' She
has relief from his counsel, but is, a short time afterwards,
oppressed again by the idea of the unacceptableness of her repent-
ance, because her sorrow for her son's death seems to her stronger
than her sorrow for her own sins. ' In this anguish of spirit she
' hastens again to her adviser, and returns home with fresh
( courage and cheerfulness.'
The Notice of Lady Capel's life comes from the same source ;
from the pen of her ' spiritual adviser ; ' Lady Maynard's from
the same. ( " I had the honour to know her near twenty years,"
says Bishop Ken of the latter, " and to be admitted to her most
intimate thoughts, and I cannot but think, upon the utmost of
my observation, that she always preserved her baptismal in-
nocence, that she never committed any one mortal sin, which
put her out of the state of grace ; insomuch, that after all the
frequent and severe examinations she made of her own con-
science, her confessions were made up of no other than sins of
infirmity, and yet even for them she had as deep an humilia-
tion, and as penitential a sorrow, as high a sense of the divine
forgiveness, and loved so much, as if she had much to be for-
given." '
Another religious trait that we observe, has, perhaps, a con-
nexion with the one we have been mentioning : they both seem
to belong to the same religious atmosphere, and to be fruits of
the same tree: we mean the directly religious conversation
which seems to have been usual then among religious persons.
Every one knows how rigidly the present order of things
excludes this : a^id certainly, under present circumstances, one
could not wish to see the bar removed. As things are, and with
our present tone, religion could not enter directly into conver-
sation, without a violation of our natural reserve and modesty.
But it does not appear a healthy state of things, in which such
a result is seen. Certainly, in the religious society in the
Churchicomen of the Seventeenth Century. 59
Church, two centuries ago, they seem to have been able to do
this, and to do it naturally, without any revulsion, and anything
to get over in the matter. We do not say that they talked in large
parties in this way, but in ordinary, quiet conversation they do
not seem to have been shy of the subject. ' " Next to the service
* of the temple," ' we hear of one, ' " there was no entertainment
* in the whole world so pleasing to her as the discourse of
f heavenly things, and those she spoke of with such a spiritual
s relish, that at first hearing you might perceive she was in
( earnest, that she really f tasted the Lord was good,' and felt
' all she spake." ' Of another, ' " she delighted in the society of
( holy persons, and the mutual warmth and light imparted by
' communion with them."' We repeat, we are far from wishing
persons now to ' talk religion.' Those who alone could ever do
it naturally and in taste, could not do it now. It would be a
struggle against the whole tone of things. Let them try, and
they will find that the words stick in their mouths, before they
get them out. But this state of extreme reserve and disguise
among religious members of the same Church, is surely not a
natural state. It could not be intended in the Christian dispen-
sation, that persons should be ashamed to talk to one another
about religion ; and should be deprived of the support of one
another's voices on the subject : and it would not be amiss if
persons had a sense of this, and accustomed themselves to regard
as a standard, and put as an aim before their minds, another, and a
more confiding and communicative, state of things. In a certain
school there is plenty of religious conversation, it is true. We do
not want that style of conversation. A Catholic mind should bear
any degree of reserve and restraint, rather than part with its mo-
desty. But is that a right state of things to begin with, in which
it is necessarily immodest to talk about religion ? Is not religion
made too much now a matter simply between the individual and
God. Minds shut themselves up, and refuse to let any one
know what is in them ; and there is awkwardness and suspicion
where there should be sympathy. No one will open out to
friend, or pastor, or spiritual guide. There is no confession, no
assisting, no advising, no guiding. There is nothing mutual,
nothing social in religion : every one goes on by himself. This
is hardly a state of things which the New Testament points to.
We profess to reject all tradition, and to go simply and purely
by the picture of Christianity which we have in the New
Testament itself. Can any one look at that picture, and say that
this is it ? We individualize Christianity, and make every single
mind's religious growth a cavernous, isolated history of its own,
carried on by individual impulses, movements, and efforts entirely,
and the work of individual will and strength. We do not make
60 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
the individual one of the body, thus giving him the benefit of the
love, sympathies, intercession around, and bringing all the good
influences moving in the Christian society to bear upon him. Our
image of Christianity wants altering : we have a wrong image in
our minds. The individual's spiritual Christian growth is not a
solitary internal process only as we image it one between
himself and God only : it is a social process. Even that very
internal process of spiritual self-improvement, which, as dis-
tinguished from the more public sphere of religion, we make so
absolutely and decidedly an individual process, is not an indi-
vidual one but a social one. Carry your Christianity into the
most inmost recesses, its most central workings, to its very seat
and fountain-head within the soul, to that point where the will
collects itself, where the strain is made, and where it is most
one's own real self acting, even here it is not individual, but
social. There are proper degrees, shapes, modifications of
sociality, but still Christianity is essentially social. Not an
arithmetical crowd of stiff erect individualities, not a host of
straight strokes that do not touch each other, but one great
mingling of hearts, one overflowing unity, wave embracing wave ;
an ocean of the spiritual life, filling every corner, and allowing
no separations and isolations within its bosom, is the living
Church. The individual is not a spiritual world within himself:
he belongs to the spiritual world universal. He is a connected
relative being: he depends for his growth on this connexion
and these relations being used and developed. In the career
of one human soul are involved the influences, seen and
unseen, of the whole spiritual world it is in. * Whether one
* member suffer, all the members suffer with it ; or one member
( be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.' There is no
( schism in the body ;' and its members have * care one for another.'
This whole idea wants being impressed upon us. The idea of
communion, participation, fellowship is not embraced, and
should be. Religion wants unbending and expanding: souls
should be brought together ; Christians should understand each
other; hearts should respond to each other; there should be places
for openness and confidence within the bosom of the Church.
61
ART. III. 1. Diary of Travels in France and Spain, chiefly in
the Year 1844. By the Rev. FRANCIS TRENCH. 2 vols. London :
Bentley. 1845.
2. Rome and the Reformation ; or, a Tour in the South of France*
A Letter to the Rev. R. Burgess. By I. H. MERLE D'AusiGNri.
London: Seeleys. 1844.
3. Letters from the Pyrenees. By T. CLIFTON PARIS, B. A.
Trinity College, Cambridge. 2 vols. London: Murray. 1843.
4. Vacation Rambles and Thoughts. By T. N. TALFOURD, D. C. L.
2 vols. London: E. Moxon. 1845.
5. A Pilgrimage to Auvergne, from Picardy to Le Velay. By
LOUISA S. COSTELLO. 2 vols. London: Bentley. 1842.
THE steady and unfailing issue of voyages and travels, though as
familiar and long-established an affair as that of cottons, or
any other article of general consumption, is yet not a little
curious, if we reflect on it. That the stream of poetry, meta-
physics, or novels, should flow on, ever fresh and fresh, is natural ;
for invention and imagination are inexhaustible sources ; but,
when the business is simply description of a country and people,
an account of manners and scenes, even that wonderful richness
and variety which the face of nature, and the condition of
humanity, present, must at last be exhausted, and transferred to
paper, by the innumerable hands and pens employed in the task.
For a tourist to find untrodden ground is quite impossible. To
say nothing of Europe, every corner of which is as well known
to us, or better, than the county of Kent ; is there a square yard
of ground in all the five continents which the restless curiosity of
English travellers has not raked up ? a building, a rock, or a
tree, which they have not catalogued ? In the most obscure and
latent island in the South Sea, would one not, reversing the case
of Robinson Crusoe, be alarmed if one did not see the print of a
foot ? There has, indeed, almost ceased to be any such thing as
a foreign country ; we are at home everywhere, and all the world
is a home to us. Sporting M.P.s have their Chateau in Pro-
vence, or their Schloss in Hungary, instead of a shooting-box on
the moors ; and Oxford and Cambridge students go for fly-fishing,
in the long vacation, to Norway, instead of to Wales.
But, the truth is, that novelty of scene is now no longer the
chief recommendation in a book of travels. It is true that much
interest must always attach to such revelations of hidden things
as Stephens' of the cities of central America; and those who seek
for the more stimulating class of excitement will be attracted by
62 Continental Travel.
the exploits of Captain Forbes, who bags his twenty brace of
tigers per diem in the jungles of Ceylon ; or of Major Harris,
who thinks nothing of his three rhinoceroses before breakfast, in
the Highlands of Ethiopia. These desperate efforts to find, in
the age of railways, the field of the wild and marvellous adventure
of a by-gone time, are, like Don Quixote's quest of chivalry, a
day too late. A much truer and wider interest is obtained by a
very different class of travels. In these, the more at our own
doors the scene, the more ordinary the incident, and, in keeping
with this, a style plain and homely, the better ; the more beaten
the track chosen by the traveller, the more likely he is to find
readers ; and
' Talking of the Alps and Apennines,
The Pyrenean, and the river Po,'
is more attractive than a six months' campaign in Ashantee, or a
survey of Tehuantepec.
Among many other causes which might be assigned for this,
the following is, perhaps, the principal : In former times the
great readers of travels were those who never travelled. Not to
go back to the days of Bruce and Dr. Clarke, when Englishmen,
except of the highest ranks, hardly ever quitted their own
country, the continental war retarded the natural progress of the
habit of promiscuous travelling. Thus, at the peace, when the
adventurous spirits had nothing to do, or to detain them from
roaming through the earth at will, there was a rich harvest of
new countries, and new nations, and tribes, civilized and savage,
to visit and describe, and novelty was thus the chief recom-
mendation of a book of travels. The bulk of readers were then
the tarry-at-home travellers, who read of places they had never
seen, nor formed the desire to see, with the greater interest on
that very account ; but now a new generation of readers has
arisen of those who have travelled, or hope to travel, and whose
interest in a volume of travels arises from its going over the very
ground themselves have lately visited, or are looking to with
pleasant anticipation. We derive the same sort of pleasure
from reading a tour under these circumstances that we do
from comparing notes, in the public room of the inn, with the
traveller whom chance throws in our way in the evening. As
in this viva wee communication, intelligence and observation are
desirable, yet not so indispensable but that one can learn some-
thing from the most ordinary and common-place persons, so it is
with the written tour, the most meagre diary, even a bare record
of dates and distances, will be gone through with interest during
that process of ( conning of maps and guide-books which precedes
6 a tour.' To this class belong Nos. 1 and 3 of the books whose
Continental Travel. 63
titles stand at the head of this Article, and to which we shall
return presently. We wish, first, to say a few words on one
source of interest peculiar to travellers in any country with whose
history we may happen to be familiar.
On the pleasure and benefit to be derived from a tour in such
a country, in respect of historical knowledge, we dwelt at some
length in a former number. Besides this study of historical sites,
there is another pregnant point of view in which the instructed
traveller may regard the country he visits in its physical geo-
graphy.
' Let us consider a little what a knowledge of geography is. First,
I grant, it is a knowledge of the relative position and distance of places
from one another ; and by places, I mean either towns or the habitations
of particular tribes or nations ; for I think our first notion of a map is
that of a plan of the dwellings of the human race ; we connect it strictly
with man and with man's history. And here I believe many persons'
geography stops ; they have an idea of the shape, relative position, and
distance of different countries ; and of the position, that is, as respects
the points of the compass, and mutual distance of the principal towns.
Every one, for example, has a notion of the shapes of France and of
Italy, that one is situated north-west of the other, and that their
frontiers join ; and again, every one knows that Paris is situated in the
north of France, Bordeaux in the south-west, &c. Thus much of know-
ledge is indeed indispensable to the simplest understanding of history.
Yet, you will observe that this knowledge does not touch the earth
itself, but only the dwellings of men upon the earth. It regards the
shapes of a certain number of great national estates, so to call them ;
the limits of which, like those of individuals' property, have often
respect to no natural boundaries, but are purely arbitrary. A real
knowledge of geography embraces at once a knowledge of the earth, and
of the dwellings of man upon it ; it stretches out one hand to history,
and the other to geology and physiology; it is just that part in the
dominion of knowledge where the students of physical and of moral
science meet together.
' And without denying the usefulness of that plan-like knowledge of
geography of which I have spoken, it cannot be doubted that a far
deeper knowledge of it is required by him who would study history
effectively. And the deeper knowledge becomes far the easier to remem-
ber. For my own part, I find it extremely difficult to remember the
position of towns, when I have no other association with them than
their situation relatively to each other. But let me once understand
the real geography of a country, its organic structure if I may so call it,
the form of its skeleton, that is, of its bills ; the magnitude and course
of its veins and arteries, that is, of its streams and rivers ; let me con-
ceive of it as of a whole made up of connected parts ; and then the
position of man's dwellings, viewed in reference to these parts, becomes
at once easily remembered, and lively and intelligible besides.' Arnold's
Lectures, p. 158.
64 Continental Travel.
If, then, a knowledge of this kind of geography be requisite
for a full understanding of history, it is a knowledge which can
be rightly acquired only by personal travel. A good description,
aided by a good map, may, however, do something towards con-
veying such a conception of a country ; and this, it is evident,
is all we can have in respect of far the greater part of the
countries whose history we read of; and the profit each person
will derive from such a description will be in the degree in which
he has formed the habit of looking at the face of a country with
a topographical eye. As an instance, in illustration of the kind
of geographical view above characterized, we will cite part of a
masterly description of France, by M. Michelet.
' Let us take a look at France as a whole, that we may see into what
divisions it naturally breaks itself.
' Mount one of the most elevated peaks of the Vosges, or, if you
prefer it, of Jura, and let us turn our back upon the Alps. We may
discern, supposing our vision able to command an horizon of three
hundred leagues, an undulating line reaching from the wooded hills of the
Luxembourg, and the Ardennes, to the valleys of the Vosges, and from
thence continued along the vine slopes of Burgundy, and the volcanic
masses of the Cevennes, till it joins the prodigious wall of the Pyrenees.
This line marks the separation of the waters. To the west of this line the
Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne flow towards the ocean ; behind it,
the Meuse and the Moselle turn to the north, the Saone and the Ehone
to the Mediterranean. In the far distance are discerned what seem two
islands in this continent ; Bretagne, rugged and low, simple quartz and
granite, a solid breakwater placed at the corner of France to receive the
shock of the Atlantic, and the currents of the Channel ; in another
direction rises the green Auvergne, the stiffened lava bed of forty extinct
volcanoes.
' The basins of the Rhone and the Garonne, important as they are,
are only secondary in this expanse of land. The life of this body is
concentrated to the north. There the grand movements of the nations
have taken place. The stream of mankind poured itself from Germany
that way in ancient times. The great political struggle of modern
times is between France and England. These two peoples stand, front
to front, as in an attitude of defiance. England presents to France
her Teutonic face, and withdraws into her rear-guard her Celts of Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland. France, on the other hand, backed up by her
German provinces, Lorraine and Alsace, opposes to England a Celtic
front. Each country exhibits to the other its most hostile element.
' In latitude, the zones of France are easily marked by their products.
In its northern zone the rich and wide plains of Flanders, with their
crops of flax and rape, and the hop, that bitter vine of the north. About
Rheims commences the real vine ; all froth and effervescent in
Champagne, rich and warm in Burgundy, it becomes heavy and stupi-
fying in Laiiguedoc, to recover its spirit at Bordeaux. At Montauban
the mulberry and the olive begin to show themselves ; but these tender
Continental Travel. 65
children of the south have but a precarious life in this unequal climate.
Thus, Arthur Young says, " France may be divided into three principal
belts ; the first, the vineyards ; the second, the maize ; the third, the
olives. The, three districts are thus distinguished first, that of the
north, in which are no vineyards; the central, in which is no maize;
the southern, which produces vines, maize and olives, all three. The
line of demarcation between the country of the vineyards, and that in
which the vine is not cultivated, would pass, as I have ascertained by per-
sonal observation, through Coucy, three leagues north of Soissons, thence
to Clermont in the Beauvoisin, to Beaumont in Maine, and on to Herbig-
nay in Bretagne." These limits, though perhaps too rigorously drawn,
are at this day sufficiently exact in the main.' Hist, de France, ii. 165.
This specimen, which is only a short extract from a survey of
France, executed in the same admirable style, in which imagina-
tion is so happily made to subserve fact, and the widest general-
ization combined with minute observation, may well compare
with the example given by Dr. Arnold of his own definition of
true geographical knowledge his description of Italy. Though
this physical geography is quite distinct from the special science
of geology, and requires merely a habit of exerting the common
powers of observation possessed by most men, without any
scientific training, it yet admits of considerable illustration from
that science. For example, when geologists tell us that the
Paris basin, a region of about 180 miles in length, and 90 in
breadth, is a lacustrine formation ; that a lake, or arm of the
sea, once occupied the valley of the Seine, which has been
filled up by alternating groups of marine and- freshwater strata
and that in the two next valleys, those of the Loire and the
Allier, there are considerable tracts of similar formation, show-
ing the existence at one period of several chains of lakes all
pointing like radii to the central mass of the Auvergne moun-
tains, 1 what an exact counterpart is here in fact, or, at least, in
science, to the picture drawn merely to the eye of the observer
in the extract we quoted above ! Michelet's metaphor, ' an ocean
of land,' is matter of fact in geology.
But leaving these speculations, which are only one out of the
many views, by proposing which to himself a traveller may reap
instruction from every mile of ground he moves over, however
apparently uninteresting, we come to the subjects of our notice.
And, indeed, in none of the four will any views of this kind be
found suggested. We say four, for the trashy pamphlet, No. 2,
has no pretensions whatever to the name of ' Tour,' which is
prefixed to it. The writer, who has gained a sort of notoriety by a
book on the Reformation, seems aware, when he has finished
his ( Tour,' that he has nothing to tell, for he adds, in a P.S.,
1 See Lyell's Geology, vol. iv.
NO. XLIX. N. S. F
66 Continental Travel.
' Forgive me for sending you so uninteresting a letter ; I wished to
satisfy your request, and yet I could not give up the necessary time for
so doing.' UAubigne.
A very good reason, we should have thought, for not writing,
and not publishing though here, perhaps, the Chelsea corre-
spondent is in fault but hardly one for the contrary proceeding.
Of all the paid tourists who, in the pithy negro phrase, ( take
walk, make book,' we have met with none more stupid and
empty than the authoress whom we have placed last in our list.
She belongs to the class of legendary tourists ; of those, that is,
who append to every place they visit a long string of marvellous
histories, such as may be raked together in great abundance out
of the Chronicles and Acta Sanctorum, but which are deprived of
all their beauty and all their meaning by being accompanied
with quizzing comments, designed to be witty, but generally
only succeeding in being vulgar and impudent. They are not
given us as true histories, or as true extracts from such and such
chronicles, nor even in the antiquarian spirit as illustrative of
the times, but simply, it would seem, for the sake of mocking at
them, as illustrative of a foolish credulity. It is surprising how
a person can go through the trouble of reading and copying so
much of what is to them mere trash, which has nothing amusing
or attractive in itself, and from all which, if multiplied ten thou-
sand fold, but one and the same everlasting moral is to be drawn,
' how foolish men were five hundred years ago.' If the retailers
of the historical reminiscences of the towns visited are tiresome,
these are odious.
But if our readers would judge of Miss Costello's fitness for
handling the history of the past, by her mode of viewing the
present, let them take the following specimen :
' The promenades on the ramparts (at Dijon) are delightful on every
side ; those beneath and beyond, planted in what must have heen
formerly the moats and outer defences, all are charming ; in fact, it is
impossible anywhere to possess greater conveniences for out-of-door
amusement than at Dijon ; and here, for the first time, we observed an
appearance of enjoyment amongst the population, not merely confined
to the lower orders, for whose exclusive entertainment and recreation
everything seems made in France. Along the alleys leading to the
park, ladies may be met on horseback accompanied by their cavaliers ;
groups of walkers are seen, as in the Champs Elyse.es, at Paris ; elegant
toilettes appear, and the actual existence is evident of a genteel middle
class, rarely to be found out of Paris. Indeed, the total absence of this
class throughout the country renders the towns extremely dull ; in
every town there are promenades, but no persons are to be seen there,
but the common people, whose costume, though picturesque sometimes
in a landscape, is sufficiently monotonous unmixed with others of a
Continental Travel. 07
more refined stamp. To an eye accustomed, as we are in England, to see
a crowd composed of all ranks, it is dreary and unpleasant to meet with
no figures but those of peasants in places where their manners are
unsuitable,' &c. Costello, vol. i. p, 295,
When the social condition of modern France is treated in this
profound and sensible manner, the reader may easily conceive
how the religious and miraculous history of the middle ages fares
in such hands.
Mr. Trench's * Diary of Travels/ offers little or nothing of
novelty. It is evidently rather written for the amusement of an
extensive circle of friends, for whose use the author has been
kind enough to print it, than with any view to the public. Those
who take an interest in the personal movements of the amiable
author and his lady, may, perhaps, read the two volumes with
pleasure; those who seek information on the present state of
France will not find it here. Indeed, the amount of information
with which the author himself starts on his ( Tour,' appears to be
rather below the average of that generally possessed about a
country by those who undertake the, now common, labour of
writing two volumes about it. The things he thinks it necessary
to explain are, that ' Temple Protestant' is the distinguishing
appellation of a Protestant chapel ; the difference between a
Cure and Vicaire, between a College and a Seminaire ; and,
though born at Orleans, his parents being 'detenus,' and
himself having paid repeated visits to the country, he was ignorant
of the title by which a French bishop is usually addressed in
conversation. We have, in the outset, a voluntary engagement
that Murray's Hand-book shall not be quoted a promise which
is too often broken ; 6 that valuable work ' being laid under con-
tribution on every occasion. For ( a very interesting sketch of
' Louis the Eleventh's character, and the extension of the French
f monarchy under his reign,' we are referred to * Robertson's View
of the State of Europe ;' and the ( Outlines of History,' or the
' Tales of a Grandfather,' apparently furnish much of the e historical
matter/ which is introduced at the proper places.
If it were the case that an oft-trodden ground ceases to yield
materials for ( Tours/ this would be a reason for not writing them ;
but it is not so. We may refer, as an instance in point, to a
book which has lately appeared ' Three Years in Constanti-
nople ; or, Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1844 ;' by
C. White, Esq. three volumes more full of details, for the most
part of very great value and interest, we never saw ; and we
could hardly have believed it possible, after all that has been
written about the East, that so much of novelty remained to be
produced.
And this in the way of hard, substantial fact. Another class
F 2
68 Continental Travel
of tour-writers can give freshness to the most familiar track by
the aid of imagination, and the gift of poetical description. Mr.
Beckford's ( Italy ' is one of the most striking instances of this.
Sergeant Talfourd, whose ( Vacation Rambles ' we have placed
at the head of this article, belongs to this class of writers. Who
has not read sheets upon sheets of Alpine description? yet, who
would not be gratified with reading the following picture of the
fall of an avalanche ?
1 The effect of the vision of the Jungfrau from this spot, grand and
surprising, was yet almost as strange as grand. From the natural
platform on which you stand, the ground, covered with coarse grass,
shelves rapidly to a dark scrubby wood, and directly beyond, as if only a
narrow belt of coppice were between, rises into heaven the huge mass of
snow-clad mountains, dazzling in purest white, except where broken by
black ribs of rock, or by some huge brown, storm-swept hollow. It is
in vain that you are assured that your eye is distant some miles from
the nearest point of Alpine snow on which it rests, and that between
your feet and the roots of the opposite mass of Alps, is a huge defile
which a shepherd-boy could not traverse in a long summer's day ; you
cannot resist the conviction that you are on the verge of the eternal
snow, or the fancy that it is all a delusion, a freak of Nature, who has
anticipated the Diorama, and cheats and delights you with an artful
picture of her own. You hear the thunder of the unseen avalanches
among the recesses of the mountains, and the conviction that you are
close to the unmelting pinnacle which defies the scorching heat, becomes
yet more intense. But it shall be disturbed. How 1 By the sight of
that which, unseen, was so terrible ! From some jutting knob, of the size
of a cricket-ball, a handful of snow is puffed into the air, and lower
down, on the neighbouring slant, you observe veins of white substance
creaming down the crevices, like the tinsel streams in the distance of a
pretty scene in an Easter melo-drama, quickened by a touch of magic
wand, and then a little cloud of snow as from pelting fairies, rises from
the frost-work basin, and then a sound as of a thunder clap, and all is
still and silent ; and this is an avalanche ! If you can believe this, can
realize the truth that snow and ice have just been dislodged in power
to crush a human village, you may believe in the distance at which you
stand from the scene, and that your eye is master of icy precipices, em-
bracing ten miles perpendicular ascent ; but it is a difficult lesson, and
the disproportion between the awful sound and the pretty sight renders
it still harder. We saw two avalanches during the hour and a half
which we spent in front of the cottage; and learned two other illustra-
tions of the truth, that amidst the grandeur of the universe, " seeing"
is not always " believing." ' Talfourd.
Though, however, Mr. Trench has none of the powers exem-
plified in this beautiful piece of description, and though his
remarks verge constantly upon the confines of truism, yet a
reader who has once fairly begun his volumes will find, we think,
an attraction about them sufficient to carry him through them.
Continental Travel 69
This is the perfect naturalness, the tone of genuine honesty, and
total absence of all ambitious pretence, which is found in them.
There is none of that effort and aim at good writing, which
gives a theatrical varnish to the books of more expert scribblers.
Though he has swollen his pages with trite and school-boy texts
of history, yet this is with no book-making view. And though
he carefully notes down everything he hears, however trivial
table d'hote conversation, observations of the waiters and
chambermaids, &c., yet it is with no notion of getting them up
for the New Burlington-street market. He is an English
clergyman, neither more nor less, who just sees what a man of
common sense, without any book-learning, would see, and tells
it, without thinking whether he is telling it well or ill in short,
in the tone of ordinary conversation. It is the unaffected sim-
plicity that pleases so in the older travellers, before travelling
became a trade, when you are made to feel that you are moving
along with them, and seeing what they saw, be it much or little,
tame or striking. We give such a writer our confidence, and
repose implicitly in his statements, and would repeat them with
a full security, which we should, unconsciously almost, withhold
from the glittering and finished accounts of the regular anecdote-
monger.
Mr. Trench set out in September, 1843, and, passing down
the western side of France, made a dip into Spain, in and out
among the Pyrenees, returned through Auvergne and central
France to Paris, in September, 1844. His mode of travelling, if
not novel, was different from that of ordinary travellers, and one
peculiarly favourable for seeing a country being a small open
carriage, drawn by a pair of ponies. The ponies themselves
become almost the heroes of the travellers' epos. Inclusive of a
stay of three months at Tours, during which they were employed
in excursions into the neighbourhood, this time was one of un-
ceasing locomotion for the ponies, who accomplished their thirty
or forty miles a-day ; and as we do not hear of their being at all
the worse at their journey's end, ' la petite grise' and ' la petite
rouge" must be very admirable little creatures, and quite worthy
of the attention their master seems to have paid them. French
roads are still mostly bad, up to the axletree often, in summer,
in dust, in winter, in mud ; but a great improvement has taken
place since Mr. Swinburne, seventy years ago, described the
road from Calais to Dieppe as f scarcely passable :'
' It runs through narrow lanes, or hollow passes, in the middle of the
boundless corn-fields, worn so deep that the top of the carriage did not
appear. We were often obliged to cross ploughed lands and ditches to
escape dangerous holes, and I was sometimes compelled to call in a person
to assist me in keeping the coach in its proper equilibrium. In spite of
70 Continental Travel.
all our care, it was once overturned. The next day we had to ascend
a lofty hill, where there did not seem to be any trace of a high-road.'
Courts of Europe, vol. i.
Among the mountains a pedestrian may have the best of it,
but, in the level plains of France, we cannot fancy any method
of travelling more advantageous than this for gaining a know-
ledge of a country. And the pretty little vignettes, which
appear, here and there, among the pages, (far better than the
more showy lithographs,) show that this opportunity was not
lost.
We should not, however, have been induced to pay so much
attention to these volumes, but for one feature which they
possess, to us a very painful one, on which we must now
proceed to say a few words. We were caught by the following
announcement in the Preface :
1 1 was desirous that the absence from home should not be without
objects and aims in accordance with the character of a Clergyman of the
Church of England; I was desirous to make myself acquainted, by
personal investigation, with the state of religion in France, and chiefly on
two points ; viz. on the hold which the Romish faith and ceremonies
have on the population of the country, and on the degree in which the
doctrines of the Protestant Church prevail at present in the land.'
Trench, vol. i.
Now, as the state of religion in France is a subject of the
highest interest, as the elements of good and of evil are strug-
gling with more active intensity there than, perhaps, in any other
country of Europe at present, we gladly seize every opportunity
of gaining intelligence of the progress of the struggle. What
we have already said, however, will have prepared our readers
to expect, what we soon found to be the case, that Mr. Trench
had little information of this character to afford. We were
prepared to differ from him, more or less, in our measures of
good and evil, in our estimate of this or that outward exhibition
of faith ; but we had not reckoned upon finding so entire an
alienation from the spirit of the One Catholic and Apostolic
Church, so utter a want of sympathy with her history, or anxiety
for her welfare, of feeling for her sufferings and her travail, as
we found here. Not that Mr. Trench is a man indifferent to
religion. Far from it. Unlike too many of our touring Clergy, who
occupy themselves abroad solely with secular thoughts, anxious to
get rid of their profession for the time, and to give themselves a
brief liberty from that little constraint which English decorum
requires at home, Mr. Trench acts and thinks like a person to
whom religion of his own sort is the uppermost subject in his
mind. Not only are we not offended by details of ( gourmandise,'
or the repeated complaints of the discomforts of inns, the badness
Continental Travel. 71
of dinners, and the extortions of landlords, which make up so
large a part of the impressions of travellers in general, but a tone
of piety pervades the whole book ; and, what is especially rare,
there is not a single expression of flippancy or lightness, hardly
of bitterness, throughout not even in condemning what he
regards as the superstitions of Rome. Scripture is constantly
brought to his mind, not always in the happiest style of allusion,
we think, as where the situation of Angouleme on a hill brings
to his mind ' the mountains that are round about Jerusalem.'
(Psalm cxxv. 1, 2.)
It is not, then, to a want of religious feeling that we must
ascribe the barrenness of Mr. Trench's pages on the real state of
religion in France. The cause lies rather in the head than in
the heart in the narrowness of his views, in the confined
horizon, which is the result of certain early prejudices, and which
cuts off the school of religionists who cherish them from all
vision of the extent and lineaments of the Church Universal.
In a country filled with memorials of every high and saintly
virtue, of a fervent Christian piety and devotion, and all the
abundant fruits of Divine grace which age after age brought
forth, and have left, at least, as a lesson and an inheritance to
the present in the country of Pascal, and Bossuet, andFenelon
names which our own Church has always held in the highest
reverence, Mr. Trench sees no religion, beyond the limits of one
small and miscellaneous sect, no Church beyond the walls of the
* Temple Protestant ;' all these rich and copious annals of
God's gracious dealings with His Church are veiled from his
eyes by one word Popery. Where the prejudices that this
powerful spell commands have been diligently cherished as
part, a primal part, of religion, a state of mind is produced
which is the ' crassa ignorantia ? of divines, a thick darkness,
in which even honest and fair minds become hopelessly per-
verted.
To the same cause may be ascribed his silly arguments against
Roman doctrines, which he does not understand, and cannot
even state correctly, but for eradicating which he thinks nothing
more necessary than a plentiful dispersion of French Bibles ;
sowing them broad-cast, so many to the square mile.
' I received from Mr. D. some interesting accounts concerning the
sale of Bibles and Testaments by means of colporteurs. At Perigueux
a colporteur had sold in one year seventeen hundred Bibles and Testa-
ments, and at another period thirteen hundred in eight months. My
informant . . . had sold in the mountains, in three weeks, one hundred
and seventy-seven Testaments and four Bibles. They select a certain
district, and offer the Scriptures for sale from house to house. The
usual price is tenpence for the Testaments, and from two shillings and
72 Continental Travel.
a penny to two shillings and sixpence for Bibles/ Trench, rol, l.
p. 231.
It is impossible to repress a smile at the naive complacency of
the following : ( We were giving away some tracts on our
c departure, and, as the Priest was looking on, I requested his
* acceptance of a French translation of Legh Richmond's " Young
4 Cottager," which he readily received. Can he, or any one else,
* fail to be interested with that delightful memoir ? ' Imagine a
French Priest, of the most ordinary education, who has hardly
ever out of his hand his breviary, in which almost every day is
set apart to the memory of some Saint, whose patrimonial
inheritance, so to say, is the whole array of Saints and Martyrs,
Gallican and Catholic, from S. Martin down to S. Vincent of
Paul, who 'through faith wrought righteousness, subdued king-
doms, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions' imagine
him invited to forego all this, and to substitute in its place ( The
Younj Cottager,' or ( The Dairyman's Daughter,' and requested
to believe that true Christianity never visited his part of the
country till brought there by an amiable and neatly dressed
gentleman, amusing his leisure by a pleasure tour in his own
carriage, with his wife and servants, or by a mercenary colpor-
teur, of the stamp of the infamous Borrow, with a keen eye to
the commission he gets on the amount of ( the Bibles and
Prayers ' he succeeds in ( putting off! '
But this blindness would be his own loss, and would be too
common a case to call for these remarks, if it went no further
than affecting Mr. Trench's views of the Church of Rome. His
views assume a most distinct and intelligible shape in a series of
acts, over which we most unaffectedly mourn, and which call for
our most decided condemnation as attached members of the
English Church. We mean his habitual and unqualified com-
munion with the French Protestants. Not now and then, as
out of curiosity, or by accident, or as a choice of evils, or with
misgivings, but on all possible occasions, by choice, and with
eagerness, without a hint of any difference of doctrine or prac-
tice, nay, with constant expressions of fervent sympathy, he
associates with them in their worship, officiates for them^ receives
the ministrations of their ministers, and assumes, in a matter-of-
course way, which would be arrogant if it were not so very
simple, that the light of the Gospel in France is confined to the
Protestant schismatical bodies. Here is an ordained minister of
the Church of England, a body which claims to be part of the
Universal Church, which assumes itself to be on the same footing
with the other Catholic Churches of the East and West, to have
the same Sacraments, the same grace of Orders, the same Apo-
Continental Travel. 73
stolical Succession, the same commission from Christ, which the
rest of the Visible Church throughout the world possesses he
goes out of his own country, into one where one of these sister
Churches is in possession, and finds his natural home and fellow-
ship ; not indeed in this sister Church that we know, and lament
our Church mourns the necessity which breaks or suspends com-
munion, where, and where alone, we would seek it where we
pray daily that it may be given when we pray for ( the good
estate of the Catholic Church.' No ; he finds himself at once
one in heart and spirit with miscellaneous bodies of sectarians,
condemned by this sister Church, excluded by her from her
fold, and reckoned among her most deadly and unremitting
enemies !
There are two aspects under which we may consider our rela-
tion to foreign Protestants Doctrine and Practice. And first
as to Doctrine. The high position taken by the Church of
England is that she is not merely a Church, but the visible
Church, in this realm, and this not merely because she is recog-
nised by the State, or because she has legal inheritance, or
technical jurisdiction, but because she is part of the one living
Body of Christ ; because she has the true Sacraments of salva-
tion through the Apostolic descent of her Bishops.
c True sacraments' [we quote from a popular work which happens to
be at hand ] ] ' being those which are " duly administered " by " lawful
ministers;" such sacraments being not "bare signs" of things absent,
but " the means whereby we receive," in the one, " a death unto sin, and
a new birth unto righteousness," and in the other " the body and blood
of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful
in the Lord's Supper;" and that the Church "hath authority in contro-
versies of faith," hath the power to " teach," to " decree," to " excommu-
nicate" (the M r ords of the Articles), and does not give every individual
preacher, much less every individual Christian, permission to take down
his Bible, and make out from it his own scheme of doctrine, or system
of Church government.'
And, lastly, not to weary with proving what all our readers
will admit, she teaches (Ordination Service)
' That it is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scrip-
tures and ancient authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been
three orders of ministers in Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests, and
Deacons. No man shall be accounted or taken to be a lawful Bishop,
Priest, or Deacon, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted
thereunto according to the form hereafter following, or hath had
formerly episcopal consecration or ordination.'
Now, is this claim of our Church a mockery, and are all these
1 Plain Words to Plain People.
74 Continental Travel.
words without meaning, that a Minister of this Church shall
identify himself with bodies which are founded on the very
explicit denial of doctrines which are the foundation and basis
of his own Church ? Is it true, as Romanists urge against us,
that these high claims exist only on paper, and are renounced in
our practice ; that when we are brought into actual contact with
the two bodies, Catholic and Protestant, our imposture is at
once detected, and we betray for which of the two we have most
affinity? Is the hypocritical cry of the Exeter 'laity,' ' our
common Protestantism,' to be substituted in the Creed for the
Article ' one Catholic and Apostolic Church ?'
}? or to take the much lower ground, that of ecclesiastical
discipline whatever we may consider to be the real position of
the Roman Catholic communion in this country, nothing is
more certain, nay, it is the only ground on which we can deny
their pretensions here, than that in France the visible and legi-
timate representative of the Church, is that Communion and its
hierarchy. The establishment or non-establishment of the
Church can make no difference in this respect. What we claim
to be here, that they are there. But the very heterogeneous
assemblage of religionists, of every hue and shade of creed, who
make up the one million of French Protestants, correspond, not
with the English Church, but with the English Dissenter. Mr.
Trench is, we believe, a Parish Priest. When an Independent
preacher comes and takes up a position in his parish, and
endeavours to form a congregation, to draw away the parish-
ioners from the Church, and offers the people the pure Gospel,
instead of the formalities of the Establishment, is Mr. Trench in
the habit of encouraging his attempts, of sympathizing in his
aims, and wishing him God speed? still less of joining his
worship, of throwing open his church to him, or of taking his turn
in the other's conventicle ? Yet this man is but doing exactly
what Mr. Trench made a point of doing wherever he went ;
holds precisely the same language about the Church of England
that Mr. Trench does about the Church of Rome ; and holds,
and preaches, the doctrines of free grace, and justification without
works, which Mr. Trench considers all-important; and, if he
went abroad, would (and might without any inconsistency) fra-
ternize with French Protestants of any description. Things
that agree with the same agree with one another. If the English
Independent or Presbyterian is one in heart and belief with the
French, and Mr. Trench is as much so when in France, whence
the impassable gulf between Mr. Trench and the Independent
at home ? Do they stand aloof from one another, on points of
form and ceremonial? And do thus men who are wont to speak
of form as so absolutely unimportant, move in diametrically
Continental Travel. 75
opposed orbits over the same ground, because they differ in mere
rites and ceremonies ?
What would be said, if one of those Clergymen, who take the
high sacramental view of the English Church, were, in travelling
in a Catholic country, not only to communicate openly with
Catholics, but, supposing such a thing possible, to say mass when-
ever he had an opportunity, according to the Roman missal?
Yet nothing is more certain than that, great as is the difference
between our Church's teaching and that of the Roman Church,
those differences are in details, and not in fundamentals ; while,
on the other hand, our difference with Protestants is one of
principle.
That we may not be thought to have overstated the degree
and nature of Mr. Trench's intercommunion with the Protes-
tants of France, we quote some instances.
At Tours
' There is at Tours a French-Protestant pastor and flock. The in-
crease of numbers professing the Reformed Faith has been very rapid ;
and it could not be otherwise than gratifying for an Englishman to hear,
that the establishment of Protestant worship in the place was due to a
countryman, the late lamented and beloved Mr. Hartley. Much bene-
ficial influence towards the promotion of the same cause is exercised at
Tours by M. and Madame Andre. Their Christian zeal and love is
widely known both in France and England ; and yet the remembrance
of the cordiality which we ever received at their hands, as well as of the
interesting meetings for Christian communion and charitable works, so
well ordered and maintained at their home, will not let me pass them
by without this testimony to their influence, character, and Graius-like
hospitality.' Trench, vol. i. p. 51.
At Saumur
1 1 had a note of introduction for the pastor, M. Duvivier, who received
us in a very friendly and obliging manner By his wish I had a
service in this interesting edifice for the few English who are at present
residing in the town and neighbourhood.' Ibid. p. 73.
At Angers
1 We rose early this morning, to clear and prepare our apartment for
a temporary church ; got in about thirty chairs, and arranged all things
needful for our pure and simple form of worship. Thirty-five came.
Three or four of the number were French ; but, being Protestants, they
were desirous of this Christian union with us, and were able to understand
and follow a considerable portion of our service.' Trench, vol. i. p. 90.
But Mr. Trench did not confine himself to performing the
English service for English and French indifferently ; at
Nantes
' We attended this morning the French-Protestant service, held in a
76 Continental Travel
large and convenient edifice, which was once the chapel of a Carmelite
monastery. There was a good congregation present, many of whom, as
I was informed, were English. The prayer was in a written form ; the
sermon extempore ; both excellent. Here, as usually abroad, it appears
to be the custom to sit while singing. The text was from Revelation
iii. 15, 16. The subject was, Lukewarmness in religion. M. Rosselet,
the French pastor, gave notice in his church, that I should have a service
for the English on the next Sunday afternoon.' Trench, vol. i. p. 147.
' M. R., the French-Protestant pastor, spent the evening with us,
and we had much enjoyment in the society of a brother minister so dis-
tinguished as he is for ability, and, at the same time, so simple in his
faith and character. At the time of our family worship, I gave him
the Bible, and asked him to read a portion, and make a few obser-
vations. He selected that grand and animating chapter, S. Peter i. 1.'
Ibid. p. 153.
At Bourbon- Vendee
' At twelve o'clock we went to the Mairie, where a comfortable, simple
apartment is assigned for public worship. We found a congregation
composed of about thirty persons.' Ibid. p. 170.
And, as a last instance, at Montauban
' To one who prizes the Reformation, and takes an interest in the
maintenance and advance of Protestantism, Montauban must be a place
of deep and lively interest. When it is known that this town contains
one of the two Theological Institutions for preparing young men for the
ministry of the Gospel in France, Montauban can scarcely be visited by
any friend of Divine truth without fervent wishes of prosperity to those
young servants of Christ, who are hence annually sent forth to fight the
battles of the Lord ; and that not with the many advantages possessed
by us at home as members of the Church established in our realm, but
in much worldly weakness and isolation, and against a host of political
and priestly adversaries. And I am sure that none of our countrymen,
to whom the glory of God and the welfare of souls is dear, should visit,
or hear of, the place without the utterance of earnest prayer that the
Institution may receive a constant and plenteous blessing from the hands
of Almighty God I called on M. A. Monod, a professor in the Col-
lege As I entered his house, I heard the sound of hymns, and
understanding that the voices were those of some who had come early to
a meeting for prayer and praise, which was shortly to commence, I re-
turned for Mrs. T., and we thus had the privilege of an unexpected
service on our way. We found a full room, and many of the young
students were present. Scripture was read, two or three hymns were
sung, M. Monod prayed, and two others, called upon by him thus to
share in the service.' Ibid. p. 262.
Thus, then, the position and claims of the English Church are
such as to render this amalgamation with French Calvinists per-
fectly unjustifiable in any of her genuine members, much more
Continental Travel. 77
in one of her Priests ; and their doctrine and discipline is utterly
alien to the true spirit of our Church. And as, if we inquire on
grounds of history and right on the grounds, that is, on which
the Church of England bases her prescription here against the
English Romanists we find that the Gallican Church has the
same rights and legitimacy in France that we claim in England ;
so, if we look to character, temper, and practice, we shall be
unable to deny that, in all these respects, that Church has the
strongest claims on our sympathy and aifections. But that an
individual, or a society, possesses an inward spirit of religion is
what can never be proved in controversy ; at least, all such
attempted proof would be thrown away on those with whom
alone the fact, if proved, would have any weight. The glowing
accounts Romanists are so fond of giving of the spread of reli-
gious feeling in France, 1 may animate and encourage those
whose sympathy is already fully formed, but as proofs, they are
totally without weight. Outward acts are, at best, a fallacious
measure of inward devotion, and the attempt, so often made, to
take a comparative gauge of the amount of personal devotion
produced by Romanism and Protestantism respectively, is but
like the comic poet's proposal to determine the merits of the
rival tragedians by the scale and weights. These statistics of
religion are even more illusory than the statistics of morality.
And such a line of argument is especially open to the retort of
an adversary of a very mean order, one of those beings who lives
but to collect the malicious scandal of a small country town, and
who is ever ready to match every fact stated in favour of the
Roman Clergy by a story which tells the opposite way. When
thronged churches are pointed to with satisfaction, such a man
reminds you that Madame Laifarge made assignations at vespers.
When, then, a person has spent twelve months in the country
without feeling the general prevalence of piety, earnestness, and
the spirit of self-sacrifice, among the French clergy without
being able to appreciate their hearty zeal, ' in labours more abun-
dant,' in toil and weariness, the hard lives, almost unrelieved by
any compensation, of the c desservans,' their patience under
opposition, opprobrium, and the untiring calumny of the infidel
and Protestant press it is quite impossible that any paper argu-
ments, any amount of facts, should overcome so deep-seated a
prejudice. We have already indicated to what we should refer
this blindness in Mr. Trench's case. In most French towns there
is a little settlement of English residents, who form a coterie
among themselves, and have their own little public opinion, and
ways of judging men and things. Whenever it happens, as it
See, for example, The Dublin Review, March, 1844.
78 Continental Travel*
does not unfrequently, that this little world becomes excited on
religious matters, a peculiar state of feeling is produced, to which
nothing among us is exactly parallel. But of all the shades and
shapes which the No -popery temper assumes, that which has a
tendency to form in a little knot of English residents in a town
in which the majority of the population are strictly Catholic is
the most malignant and unreasonable. A close compact is
formed with the French Protestants of the place, and their
united forces are spent in getting together new converts, new
tales of scandal against the priests. Those who know what
converts from Romanism generally are, unless in novels written
by Anglican clergymen, may well imagine the bitter nucleus of
faction and hate thus formed as a sore in the side of the paro-
chial clergy. It is thus that the English too often become the
means of upholding irreligion, profaneness, and vice, in foreign
countries. If they fall into the circle of such a coterie, they
lose all positive religion, and place theirs in nothing else but in
opposition to that which they see around them. Living six days
of the week for nothing but enjoyment and pleasure, offending
the religious sense of the people by their Friday feastings, and
only seeming to acknowledge any outward religion by the sour
rigidity they observe on the Sunday festival, they form one of
the most formidable among the many enemies which a conscien-
tious priest has to contend against.
Mr. Trench's horizon, notwithstanding his acquaintance with
the Bishop of Nantes, to whose character he does reluctant jus-
tice, was almost confined to this unpromising circle. As one
instance, in a different subject, of what we must consider his
narrowness of view, we mention his notion that the present Royal
Family are personally popular. He is persuaded that the late
Duke of Orleans was beloved by the nation. Nothing can be
more unfounded than such a belief. The state of opinion on the
subject we believe to be this : The class who nourish any degree
of loyal sentiment, do so in favour of the exiled family exclu-
sively they are legitimists. But the great mass of French
people are strangers to any such sentiment something even
of ridicule attaches to the idea of loyalty. When, in 1843,
.M. Thiers, by a slip of the tongue, used in the Chamber the
expression ' sujets respectueux,' there was a shout of indignation
from all sides f Nous ne sommes pas sujets ! Nous ne voulons
pas etre sujets ! ' 1 But though there is no such sentiment in
1 This scene was but a repetition of one which occurred in the Tribunate in 1801,
when a treaty of peace with Russia, which had cost infinite trouble, negotiation, and
many sacrifices to bring about, was almost rejected because the word ' subjects ' was
used in it. The First Consul bad hard work to prove to the irritated 'citizens,' by
reference to the Dictionary of the Academy and other authorities, that the word was
as applicable to the members of a republic as to those of a monarchy.
Continental Travel. 79
existence (and, indeed, how should there be?) towards the pre-
sent Monarch and his family, yet all classes are quite content
that things should remain as they are they are satisfied to be
governed (if the word be not quite inappropriate) by Louis-
Philippe. But if there is any one class who do entertain any-
thing that could be, by a stretch of courtesy, called attachment
towards that Sovereign, it is just that class of the French people
to which the greater part of the Protestants belong the small
and well-to-do tradesmen who are attached to him because he
gives them peace and security. This is the real secret of con-
servatism of Mr. Trench's ( loyalty' in France. f If we
have not become savages, Spaniards, or St. Simonians,' says
M. Balzac, ( thank the grand army of grocers. It has main-
( tained everything. " I support," is its motto. If they did not
6 maintain a social order of some sort, where would they find
* customers?'
The much-talked-of increase of Protestantism in France we
believe to be intimately connected with the spread of commercial
and trading habits. Attention to the ' interets materiaux' is
gaining ground every year among the French. They have been
roused by our example, and begin to think making money a
better employment than making revolutions. Some observers
we have heard regretting that much of the national gaiety of
temper and politeness of manners is giving way to the absorbing
interests of f actions' and ( rentes.' It is a fact, which our own
observation has confirmed to us, that, some how or other, in
France, this spirit is often found in connexion with Protestant
bias, or profession ; at least, we should be surprised to find that
a man who was making his way, was a good Catholic. But such
men are very good Conservatives; and it is in them that the
present dynasty, and the ministry of M. Guizot (himself a Pro-
testant) find their surest support.
We have gladly acknowledged that Mr. Trench's aims and
thoughts in his tour have been of so much higher a stamp than
those of too many English travellers ; but we see he has his own
notions of ( the comfortable.' The following case of conscience
is amusing; and, trivial as it is, may not be wholly devoid of
bearing upon our last remarks :
' We went on, in the evening, to a village called La Motte, where we
had been led to expect a tolerable inn At the end of a long and
lonely drive, through a country which a Frenchman had told me was
" un pays perdu," we reached a few houses on each side of a street forming
the village called La Motte. Here we drove up to the inn which I had
heard of; but the landlady herself told us that we should be " mal
loges," as her inn was under repair. By-tlie-bye, it seemed much to
need it. Not a single room for our reception was available ; so that we
80 Continental Travel.
had to make an attempt opposite, where was another inn, and where we
wished to pass the Sunday, in accordance with our rule of resting en-
tirely on this day a rule which we had not infringed for a single mile
during the whole course of our journey. We were, however, much
vexed at seeing the extreme unfitness of the place, even for one night,
much more for a longer sojourn. I shall not dwell on the materials of
our supper, (so rarely bad or deficient in France,) nor upon the state of
the bedroom, which we reached along a creaking passage, with such
large gaping holes in the floor, that I was literally afraid of going along
it in the dark, for fear of stepping into one of them. However, notwith-
standing these circumstances, had I been alone, or with only a gentleman
as a companion, I should have thought it right to remain here till the
Monday ; but, as it was, it seemed to me otherwise. Mrs. T. had had a
long and hot journey during the week, and it was evident that neither
proper rest, food, or comfort, could be obtained for her. Accordingly,
the decision being left to me, I thought that in the sight of God it
would be allowable for us to proceed on the ensuing morning, though
much regretting the circumstances of the case.' Trench, vol. ii. p. 212.
Among the many points in which members of the English
Church are without guidance or authoritative directions, that of
how to conduct themselves in respect of the religious worship
in Catholic countries is one. There is, however, one plain dis-
tinction which an obedient son of the Church must always make.
He will always keep aloof from the schismatical bodies who call
themselves Protestant, neither being present at their services,
nor employing if in orders, and he chooses to officiate their
temples for the English services. To act otherwise is to betray
her cause ; to renounce the very authority on which he acts as
her minister. Nothing, indeed, can be more humiliating to the
English Church, nothing more subversive of her claim to be
Catholic, than this identification of her with foreign Protes-
tantism. But to tamper with the faith of Catholics, to league
ourselves with bodies such as the Foreign Aid Society, whose
professed aim and object is to be the authors of confusion, not
of peace, is even worse, ' As if,' as it has been well said, ' it
' were matter of triumph, not of lamentation, that a member of
6 the Roman or Greek communion should throw off the great
6 tenets of the Faith which all Catholic Churches hold in common,
6 to embrace that system of irreverence and semi-infidelity which
f such teachers as we have been referring to, designate by the
6 name of Protestantism, but which our Liturgy comprises under
* the denomination of " false doctrine, heresy, and schism." M
Indeed, the way in which the Protestants ever side with the
infidel party in France, is one that throws into strong relief the
unbelieving character of that omnigenous heresy. One of the
1 British Critic, July, 1841.
Continental Travel. '81
most frequent subjects of congratulation in the Reports of the
Foreign Aid Society is, the total desertion of the churches in
many of the rural communes, such that many have been shut up,
and the Priest withdrawn. This is, unhappily, too true I but this
desertion of the mass is not to the profit of Protestantism (even
such as it is), but of infidelity. The people forsake the church,
or at least the altar, (for often there is no church,) and shun con-
fession, for no other form of religion, but to listen lazily to the
harangues of the Protestant preacher, seasoned with bitter
invectives against all they have hitherto known of religion, with
the same curiosity, and as much profit, as they look on at the
exhibition of the mountebank.
For, notwithstanding the unmistakeable appearances of a
strong religious reaction in France, it is also true that irre-
ligion is gaining ground. Each is making progress in a
different class. In the Revolution, it was the middle and upper
classes who were tainted with infidelity. These are now coming
back to the Church. A glorious sight it was, and one to be
thankful for, to see 3,000 persons, all men, receiving the com-
munion at one time at Notre Dame, on Easter-day last. But, on
the other hand, the Voltairian movement has not yet reached its
apogee. It seems as if, like some virus, it must go through all
the ranks of the social system before its force can be spent. And
it has its work to accomplish yet among the lower classes. In the
inferior populations, above all among the rural populations, and
where the influence of Paris extends, the evil gains, the wound
is still open and spreading. There atheism has still novelty and
piquancy to recommend it ; Voltaire and Diderot have a sale
which among the upper classes they have long since ceased to
have. There the infamous productions of the last century are
the pamphlets of the day. In these districts the churches are
depopulated, communions become less frequent, and, in more
than one instance, the pastor, left all alone by his flock, has been
reduced to pray for a community who had ceased to pray for
themselves. 1
These, though alarming symptoms, do however present but
one side of the picture. There is much to counteract and
balance this fearful growth of a new harvest of unbelief. Even
in the arid desert of the banlieue of Paris may be met with
little oases of Christianity; single pious parishes where the faith
has been kept alive almost by miracle. In other spots, again,
the most desperate village, once a mere nest of condemned
1 See an interesting Memoir by M. de Champagny, ' L'Eglise et ses Adversaires
en 1825et en 1845,' in the 'Correspondant' for January last ; a journal in which those
who take interest in the present condition of the Church in France will find the best
information, united with a very high order of thought and sentiment.
NO. XLIX. N.S. G
82 Continental Travel.
reprobates, has been sanctified by the zeal of a single man ; some
laborious and devoted cure has brought them from the cabaret
to the church, from the most savage profligacy of manners to
holiness. If in certain districts the churches are empty or
emptying, in others new ones are being built by the zeal of the
flocks. The Voltairian epidemic has not yet run its course ; but
there is not a single commune throughout the kingdom, where,
in spite of outward appearances, the pulse of Catholic piety, if
you choose to search for it, does not beat beneath the finger,
and where some protest is not raised against predominant un-
belief, by some act of Christian faith, secret perhaps, but
indestructible.
83
ART. IV. 1. Lebengeschichte des Baron de la Motte Fouque. 1840.
2. Ausgewdhlte Werke von Friedrich Baron de la Motte Fouquk.
1841.
IN returning to the life of Fouque, we feel that we owe an apo-
logy to our readers for again troubling them to recall the
view of biography on which hitherto we have proceeded. We
all of us feel great difficulty in reading, still more in drawing
any definite idea from, those many biographies and memoirs
which inundate the press, in which every minute circumstance
is related with praiseworthy precision, the details of the pedigree,
infancy, childhood, boyhood, manhood, and senility of the hero.
And this is because they seem meaningless. Kven with all
their particularity they are the history not of the individual,
but of the genus. They distinguish in no respect their subject
from any other man. A life is written of A. or B., and of the
two or three volumes of 500 pages each, more than four-fifths
will equally suit that of C, or D. The man's life, that which
constitutes his distinctive history, lies but in the fifth. And
had the writer been contented with giving us this, we should
have carried off an idea ; as it is, we are overwhelmed, we grow
sleepy ; perhaps we wade through a volume, and give the rest
up in despair. Now, in the case of Fouque, we have been
endeavouring to apply this principle. By carefully examining
his life and writings, we have sought to discover that idea,
which was the moving element of both, and, by laying this
before the reader, with the arguments which led us to it,
developed by facts, to give, what seems to us, the fairest and
most useful sketch of the man himself, We argued that poetry
was, according to a well-known definition, the endeavour to
express some powerful and absorbing emotion, whose full ex-
pression is somehow necessarily repressed; and, in examining
the life of Fouque, we endeavoured to prove that in him this
emotion was a yearning desire to express a belief in or per-
ception of the invisible world, most difficult, nay, impossible, to
express fully and perfectly, yet, at the same time, not lacking
ways and means to express itself poetically or imperfectly, by
analogies, contrast, irony, and the like. In this way, then, we
endeavoured to show that which governed his heart, and to find,
as it were, a key to many obscure passages in his life and
works, hoping, at the same time, to escape the enumeration of
much indistinctive matter, common to him with half the world
besides. The chief ground of our argument was what we first
G 2
84 Life and Writings of Fouque.
showed must inevitably ensue, viz. that, when the absorbing
emotion received due power of expression, the workings of the
mind would be healthy ; when checked beyond the fitting limit,
troubled and distracted. We consider that we have now worked
out the first part of our subject. We have represented Fouque
as suffering, filled with an eager desire to express his yearnings
and emotions, yet without adequate power from either thought,
sympathy, knowledge, or education, weakly in body and mind, on
the brink of madness and suicide. If now, then, we can succeed
in showing that, under circumstances obviously favourable to the
development of such an emotion, his mind grew calm, our object
will in some measure be effected.
Now, in speaking of one possessed by an emotion of this
kind, seeking vent to express itself, we are speaking of nothing
which is not quite conceivable in any man. Whether he be
Christian or heathen, a man's heart might be filled with feel-
ing so absorbing and powerful as to drive him to grasp at
every mode of expression which came within his reach. Even
this desire to give vent to certain indistinct stirrings of the heart
connected with the invisible world might be found in any man,
and they would be expressed more or less fully according to the
circumstances in which he was thrown. As, for instance, when
Plato, by the aid of the Greek language, and the imperfect
mythical truths of the old world, could image forth and relieve
his mind with the expression of heavenly and invisible things.
But we may fairly urge that, through the Christian religion, or,
to use a safer phrase, through the truths embodied and conveyed
in the Catholic Church, leading us straight on to the heavenly
and invisible, would alone be found the sure and satisfactory
exponent of that yearning ; and, when we add to this the case
of one born in Christian times, we may fairly go on to assert
that a mind thus possessed could not possibly find peace till it
had grasped these truths.
The argument then would be reduced to this. A poet is
one possessed with some deep and absorbing emotion. This
must, in some way or other, and indirectly, be expressed :
if not expressed, evil if duly expressed, rest and tranquil-
lity, result. The circumstances best adapted for expression
vary with the emotion itself. This emotion may be ascer-
tained from the phenomena of its expression or repression, viz.
from its result in rest or unrest, in poetry or in distraction. If
the circumstances be such as would naturally be adverse to the
expression of any particular emotion, and we find accordingly
unrest in the individual, there is a presumption that this emotion
possesses him. Still more, if, on the other hand, we find, under
circumstances favourable to the expression of such emotion,
Life and Writings of Fouque. 85
poetry gushing forth, and the temperament peaceful and happy,
may we fairly infer what the emotion is, without reference to
the means by which it is expressed, looking only to the circum-
stances and the fact that there is peace and expression.
To consider, then, the case before us. Fouque lived for
many years, as we have seen, in outward circumstances, singu-
larly unfavourable for the expression of this yearning after the
invisible world, and his mind became unhappy and distracted.
When at length these circumstances changed, and he became
religious, and mingled with religious and earnest men, and ac-
quainted himself with books, and found himself in a position
where noble aspirations and a high soul could make themselves
felt, the tone of his mind changed also. Therefore we may
infer that this emotion or possessing feeling as being that which
would be influenced by these circumstances, was that which was
at the bottom of his mind. Certainly it is most striking to read
the two parts into which his life is, as it were, divided, the one
containing his early education, till he joined the army, the other
the rest of his life from that time onwards.
To this latter we proceed. The reader will, perhaps, remem-
ber that, in 1803, he left his father's house, and soon after mar-
ried, and got his discharge from the army. From this time, he
gave himself up to literary pursuits, living at Nennhausen, and
communicating with Bernhardi, the Schlegels, and other literary
men of the day. Germany was divided into two distinct poetical
schools. The rivalry between the admirers of Goethe and Schil-
ler is a popular topic ; and separate from both of these, though
truly, to our dull English minds, more in name than degree,
arose the romantic school, founded and sustained by the two
Schlegels, Ludwig Tieck, and men of less note, among whom,
perhaps, we may class Chamisso. These set themselves to lower
in the popular estimation the so-called Classical School, of
whom, perhaps, Wieland is the most abstract specimen. We
have neither the knowledge nor the inclination to investigate
'Almanacks' and 'Reviews,' 'Criticisms and Counter-criti-
cisms,' in order to mark distinctly the differences, and shades of
differences, between these two Schools and their adherents. It
is sufficient, for the present purpose, to point out how the general
tenets of that called Romantic must have corresponded with the
peculiar genius of Fouque. It was this romantic School which
first saw the deep meaning hidden in the Mahrchen, or tradition-
ary nursery tale ; which dealt with early mythologies as embody-
ing ' world-old ' truths ; which traced the analogies between the
seen and the unseen, treating the one but as the exponent of the
other ; which boldly worked out in its philosophy the grand dis-
tinction between f reason' and ' understanding,' that they are
86 Life and Writings of Fouque.
two separate faculties^ if indeed the reason can be called a faculty*
the latter, as it were the handmaid to the former, reason intui-
tively giving birth to truths or ideas, understanding digesting
into logic that which is in itself above logic, as the goldsmith
can create the ring, but neither the gold nor diamond which
compose it ; lastly, it was this school which first, of that gene-
ration, dealt earnestly and truly with Religion, albeit, not untinc-
tured with strange mystical views. Now, so soon as Fouque
got among these men 3 he seemed, to use a common phrase, in
his element. The school seemed made for him, to satisfy his
peculiar yearnings and sympathies with the Invisible World.
And exactly as our hypothesis suggested, he was at peace
and happy, and overflowing with romance in prose and verse,
all serving to express the idea of his heart. Thus his writings
at this time show every thing passing through the alembic of
the mind, whether History, Classical Literature, Politics of
the time, only to come forth in a romantic form. Sintram,
Wild Love, Thiodolf, will exemplify our meaning ; all contain
classical tales and myths thus grotesquely twisted into romantic
shapes.
So, too, at this point of his life he found, with some sorrow,
that he was diverging from many of those whom he had always
admired, and whose society he had eagerly sought; among
others, Heinrich von Kleist and Schiller. For so it is ever with
men. They hold long together, and it seems that nothing can
separate them, yet a turn of a hair is sufficient for the purpose.
The bent of these men was to Pantheism, of Fouque to Catho-
licism. They start from a common ground of seeking the
beautiful wherever it may be found, but the one sees it as
embodying, the other as but typifying, God. We shall have
occasion to allude to this again.
Perhaps the following interview with Schiller may illustrate
what we have said of the calm happiness which now possessed
Fouque, and of the power which he, who formerly cast aside
his books in despair, had now acquired of feeling and compre-
hending so abstruse a subject as Greek Rhythm. He had
been introduced to him at Weimar ; and a few years afterwards
met him at Lauchstadt, drinking the waters. Schiller hardly
recollected him, yet, with great urbanity, welcomed him as a
friend. He found himself among a herd of young men, who
followed the great Poet from place to place, like the school
in Academia of old, drinking in his eloquent words, and not
very careful how they treated such as denied or questioned his
authority. They usually occupied themselves in discussing
points of literature, arguments in which Schiller's dictum wag
like the sword of Brennus. They looked somewhat askance on
Life and Writings of Fouque. 87
young Fouque, as from the enemy's camp (for Schlegel had
shown in the Musen Almanach that Schiller was vulnerable),
and seemed to look for an opportunity to measure swords. The
conversation turned on the Greek Drama, how far it was cal-
culated for representation on the German stage. Fouque, a
devoted admirer of ^Eschylus, at once mentioned the Prometheus
as, if properly translated, fit for the purpose. This brought
them to the subject of the Metres, and the question arose, how
far was it possible to render the Greek into German trimeters.
Fouque advocated strongly the affirmative, finding fault with
Stolberg's translation as defective in this point; and, on the
other hand, the Schillerites blamed him as too rigorous, and as
though this strictness of versification must cramp the Poet's
freedom. ' By no means/ he replied ; f to the true poet, the
' so-called difficulties of metre are suggestive, as Stolberg would
' have found, had he started on this principle. In ^JEschylus, and
' especially his Prometheus, the trimeter cannot be dispensed
' with. In what less voice could the gods and Titans express
' themselves, or rather Titans and gods, for Titans here, pro-
f phetic heroes of an ancient mighty world, have the mastery
' over the newly-risen and quickly -setting race of gods? How
' could they talk, but in the heavy tramping trimeter ?' A
well-known actor, whose powerful voice seemed exactly formed
for heroic metres, rejoined somewhat harshly, ' We shall, I sup-
pose, amongst others, be acting your trimeter plays.' Schiller here
took up the subject, and replied to his follower kindly, ' Why
' not, friend? In Joan of Arc, Montgomery speaks in this
' metre with the Maid of Orleans. Does not every good thing
' at first appear more full of difficulties than in reality it is ?
' Remember how all Iambics were strange on our stage when
' I introduced Don Carlos. I do not mean to say that it is
( altogether in Iambics, but Iambics there are notwithstanding.
( And at first there seemed too many, for your actors never
' failed to alter the foot by an oh ! or ah ! or by changing a
' shrug for a sigh, to alter the character of the metre. But now
6 things are changed, and I say it in glad acknowledgment. For
' if by chance your memory fail you, you strive to readjust the
( injured measure, not only by these interjections, but by a dex-
' terously changed word, so as not to injure the Iambic. And,
' doubtless, the same may happen to the Trimeter Iambic.'
Again they returned to the Prometheus. Schiller sat calmly
listening, and at length said, * I have thought much on this sub-
' ject, and I will tell you to what my thoughts have led me.
' The Cothurnus and the Mask, moulded to aid the voice, are
' both good and useful ; but for these Titan JEschylean forms
' we want something more : I should feel satisfied with nothing
8 Life and Writings of Fonqui.
short of phantasmagoric images" of superhuman size; while
the gigantic, horse-breaking words are thundered through
speaking trumpets by mighty voices. And the almost sta-
tionary scene makes one image forth such representations where
the beautiful group of ocean nymphs is ranged round the
fierce Hero fastened to the rock by fetters, but still more by
his own untamed, prophetic mind. So, too, I think in contrast
to the flying and active Hermes, would rise the gigantic ocean
on his winged griffin.' We have introduced this partly for its
own sake ; for who does not wish to hear a few last words of
Schiller ? but also because it seems to show a more settled state
of Fouque's mind.
He speaks thus of a scene in a poem written at this time, in
a peculiar metre, whose subject was the acts and martyrdom of
the great S. Boniface : ' My verse had fallen into a simple,
church-like metre at a fitting spot ; viz., where the newly-bap-
tized Saxons hold their first Christian solemnity. For this was,
as it were, a foreboding of the future, though truly as far from
the real Church-feeling as a meteoric light from the beams of
the rising sun.' Here, again, is just what we might expect.
He was versed with what was in a measure true, and with
earnest hearted men, seeking the truth. His mind was gradually
righting itself, and Nature, as we may say, led him on to
Catholic subjects.
Now, too, came that letter, to which we have already alluded,
from the old Catholic Priest, belonging to that branch of the
Fouque family who had remained in France. He was the last of
the name. The estates had passed away to a distant relative, the
Prince Tallemont. Strangely enough, he had written to young
Fouque, with a yearning desire to see the old family again settled
in their ancestral halls. Forcibly he urged him to return to the
bosom of the old Church, still lovingly stretching forth her arms
to receive him, her truant child. ' Might it not have been through
' the departure of the family from the true faith that they had
' been shorn of their glory, and brought from Baronial sway to
6 the estate of private gentlemen ? If the only remaining heir
( would but return to the Catholic fold, might not a higher
f destiny be yet in store for them ? Might not the paternal
' hearths again kindle in the long-lost splendour of the days of
' old ? And then, to look to the soul, where could one be safer
' than in the bosom of that Holy Catholic Church, who asserted
( that she was the only channel through which to find salvation,
* while Protestants themselves admitted that Catholics could be
6 saved.' The first of these arguments, it will readily be seen,
was strangely ad hominem. In the beginning of Minstrel Love
he mourns over the ruined castle and decayed glory of the family
Life and Writings of Fouqui. 89
of Maraviglia, ruined, like his own, by joining heart and hand
with schism, the Waldenses and Arnald of Brescia. * Thy great
' grandsire,' says Altarbal, the aged monk, ' my noble Maraviglia,
c would also be a delver in the mine. He joined the new doc-
' trines ; nay, for a time, Arnald of Brescia himself lived under
* the shelter of his ruined castle. Alas, youth ! the Church was
* compelled to drop the mantle of love, and, after many a warn-
' ing, always echoed in vain, her avenging sword smote the
6 castle of thy ancestors.' Or, again, in at least two of his
romances, he portrays a distinguished hero, the Knight of Mont-
faucon, mixed up in a sort of genealogy with all the heroes of
chivalry, as it were a Rinaldo or Ruggiero, to the future family
of Fouque. How eagerly, then, would he have clutched at the
chance of restoring the position of his family. And, perhaps,
had the Priest confined himself to this, instead of throwing
doubt on his own words by putting forth the notorious fallacy in
his latter argument, he might have succeeded in bringing his re-
lative back to the Church. One who had set forth the glory of
Catholicism, her universal communion, chivalrous opposition to
the world, and subjection of the fine arts to the majesty of reli-
gion, could hardly have failed to win him to that holy faith
whose spirit, at least, so strongly pervades his writings. But
Fouque had studied too deeply the logical exercises of Kant
and Fichte to be won by any mere logic, least of all by a
sophistical jangle.
He was, now, as we have shown, in a state of compara-
tive repose, able to study hard, reason exactly, criticise and
mingle in society ; but the time of full rest had yet to come.
* After the confessions,' he says of himself at this time, ( made
' at the beginning of this life, the reader will not be surprised if
' I consider myself till my thirtieth year, and even still longer, as
6 but a well-meaning heathen ; yet, from the beginning of 1806, 1
6 began to rise. The glories of the Catholic Service attracted me,
' as well as the wondrous legends represented in noble splendour
' in the lays of the new Romantic School to which with body and
( soul I belonged. My first thought after I became well settled
' in life, was to return, with my beloved wife, to the fellowship
' of the old church ; and I dreamed of places of devotion fixed
' in the most secret spots of the forests of my new home,
c pilgrimages to Italy, and many still more wondrous things.'
His spirit was carried away exactly as might have been
expected. For where could a more fitting vent be found than
in the outward glories of the Catholic Church to express his
yearnings after the invisible world ? what could aid expres-
sion so well as her pomps and festivals ? what grander idea
could be met with, or more apt for the purpose, than the subser-
vience which she holds forth to her admiring sons of all noble
90 Life and Writings of Fouque.
arts to religion ? Would that he had stopped here. Yet it was
hardly to be looked for in that age wherein he lived ; when even
the best could not separate the notion of superstition from
holy obedience, and priestcraft from apostolic doctrines and
descent.
Hence it was that he found relief and comfort in the strange
and enigmatic language of Jacob Behmen : the bias of his mind
in studying these, we suppose soothing and seductive, ravings, is
shown towards the deep things of the Invisible. And this
quiet and repose succeeds to a state of discomfort and listless-
ness. Doubtless a man may work with a heart ill at ease, but
surely not with these spontaneous overflowings of peace and joy.
From this time, then, he became daily more religious ; as the
knowledge of heavenly things wrought as the element of ex-
pression to the thoughts of his heart, his labours prospered ;
and one after another those romances and poems were struck off,
which daily become more known and admired by the awakened
Catholic spirit of the present generation. Schlegel was his
master. He it was who turned the course of his muse to nor-
thern literature. His critical eye at once perceived where the
strength of his scholar lay ; and when Fouque, intoxicated with
the beauties of Calderon, was on the point of devoting himself
to Spanish literature, he dissuaded him with, ' Thy true magnet
is the north.' And so powerfully had the genius of this distin-
guished poet worked in the hearts of men, that when, in 1804,
the attractions of Madame de Stael drew him away to Coppet,
the Romantic School was manfully upheld, in spite of his ab-
sence, by a well-trained and stout-hearted set Bernhardi, Cha-
misso, Varnhagen, Neumann, and Fouque, less known then, but
perhaps now more familiar to many than even Schlegel himself.
The writings of these men it is true even of such as Shelley
seem to strike a deep-seated chord of feeling in our hearts.
They contain, as it were, the germ of Catholicity. Often
we cannot agree with the views they put forth. Sometimes
they startle us by an apparent flippancy, yet we feel that
they embody poetry and truth. It is a step in the right
direction when men discern that nature is a parable, though
they still may be at a loss to read it ; that the invisible things
may be known by the things that are seen, though their heart
be not yet prepared to discover Him who is made known. How
far more ennobling this f feeling after God, if haply he may be
found,' than that wretched temperament which sees the wondrous
things around merely as so many phenomena, to enable man to
fill his weak heart with vanity, corpora mlia, on which to experi-
mentalize, and deduce his so-called general laws. And what-
ever faults we may be inclined to find with these men, we must
give them the praise of being the first of their generation to
Life and Writings of Fouqu6. 9 1
Work out in their writings the great principle, that the things
in heaven and earth are other than they seem. Let the reader
keep this clearly before him, and he has the key of Fouque 's
works.
At this time he brought out two dramas, the Roe and the
Falcon, written in the Spanish metre, in which, ( behind the
* fanciful forms of knights and ladies, lay a knowledge of nature
' in air and earth,' and planned two others, to be called The Gold-
fish and Salamander, putting forward some super-mystical the-
ories or symmetries in fire and water.
And now came a time of trial, when the ill success of the
Prussians in 1806 left the country exposed to all the annoyances
of an invading and occupying army. Yet, grievous and galling
as this subjection was, it was not without its use. It served to
concentrate the energies of all, join all parties in the land, and
rouse that antipathy to the French so fearfully displayed seven
years after in the Leipzig campaign. For the present, resist-
ance was out of the question. The only chance to the villagers
of safety from pillage and insult lay in separately showing a bold
face whenever detachments of the French came upon them. And
in this view Fouque established some little discipline in his vil-
lage, at Nennhausen, put his house into defensible order, and
watched day and night. And the consequence was, that when
a body of 500 French appeared in the little village, a firm pre-
sence, backed by a French letter of safety, preserved it from
their insolence. So highly was this service prized, that, to this
day, the curious visitor may find its record in the Nennhausen
Parish Register.
About this time he published a small romance, Alwin by
name. The time is during the thirty years 1 war, and in it a
young poet is introduced, who ' passes his life in happiness and
' sorrow, anger, glory, oppression, consecutively, till he arrives
' at the recognition of the only truth and peace and love here
* below, where he dwells, for the rest of his life, with his master
' in a holy island.' Here, then, we have the same peacefulness
of mind which enables a man to work calmly, and contemplate
philosophically, or rather historically, the period of trouble and
unrest.
But, perhaps, the following anecdote, more clearly than any-
thing, shows the change which had come over his mind. He
had formed a friendship with Heinrich von Kleist, and received
a letter from him in these mysterious and most fantastic words :
' We are now both of age as poets, it is then right that we join
* hands in a bright bond of union.' Fouque did not much heed
this at the time, but shortly afterwards he heard that Kleist was
alluding to suicide, as the only escape to a brave heart in the
92 Life and Writings ofFouqub.
forlorn condition of their fatherland ; and thus he expresses
himself on the subject: ( A half view of existence could not
satisfy a mind like his, and the sun of faith had not risen to
him. He was seized with an uncontrollable desire to peep behind
the curtain, under the sad delusion that for this it needed but
to die. In this view, he invited two of his friends to aid on the
voyage of discovery, and when they declined the perilous expe-
riment, he became quite alienated from them.' Kleist's own
fate is too well known to need relating. He was but the type
of a class, too popular at that time on the continent; men of
ardent but ill-regulated hearts, who lacked but religion to become
really useful men, but whose poetry of heart, through this defi-
ciency, became a dreadful snare to themselves. They were capa-
ble of self-denial, and conspicuous for a generosity of character
which approved itself to the minds of all. And since self-denial,
wherever met with, and for whatever motives, is always certain to
tell among men, they exercised no small influence on the
tone of the times. It is, therefore, remarkable, that, possessing
those very qualities most likely to attract Fouque, chivalrous
courage and deep attachment to their fatherland, they did not
altogether count him among their company. Why should he
have been led to religion, and, relying on this, have escaped the
darkening effects of that philosophy which those around him
were eagerly pursuing, had there not been in him something
actively working, which they recognised not in themselves ?
And this surely could have been no other than that yearning
aspiration after the unseen world, that world with which
Religion deals, to which we have so frequently called the
reader's attention.
Another passage of his life shows this yet more strongly.
He met his old tutor Hulsen, who, it will be remembered,
vexed at losing his pupil, had parted unkindly from him before
he joined the army. Hulsen had given his mind to what
Fouque calls natural religion, while his pupil had been studying
God's written word. And thus he disclosed his views to him
in an evening walk through a sandy pine-forest : * Think you,'
he said, with light flashing from his eyes, 'that I worship this
so-called Nature as I worship that Idea which is hidden be-
hind it? By nature I mean not this sand which fills our shoes,
not this sweet odour of pines, but that which was before all
time, which while time is, disappears, which will recur in all
eternity. But we only stammer, forth the mighty Mystery.'
The reader will, of course, recognise in this grotesque speech of
Hulsen, that very winning, though most dangerous, form of
German thought, to which we have already alluded, Pantheism;
that which professing to find God in all things, in fact finds and
Life and Writings of Fouqui. 93
realizes Him nowhere at all. We call it a winning form of
philosophy, because it naturally brings before the mind all classic
images in life and vigour, clothing them with an apparent reality
which they do not indeed possess. Here was again a snare to
Fouque's poetical mind, and this, as we see, he escaped.
Thus Fouque began by admitting and trusting in a revelation,
and thence learned to see nature truly, God's unwritten book,
while Hulsen and his school, by shutting their eyes to revela-
tion, naturally were misled, even by that which they owned as
their guide. We do not mean to assert that, if heathen men
really, earnestly, and humbly give their hearts to find God, even
in His unwritten word, such would not be guided to truth; but
to Christians, this method of searching cannot but be intel-
lectual and antagonistic, a groping blindly in the dark, neglect-
ing the lantern beside their feet.
Once more, let us hear Fouque arguing with Fichte, the great
German reasoner. ' He was alone with his wife and child ; he
f conversed without any restraint, lost in deep and mysterious
f subjects. Soon we arrived at the great question of Redemp-
' tion : Whether did it come through Him alone, who was God
( and man, or had the moral exertions alone of each man the
( power to save him ? The differences between us were brought
' fully to light; perhaps the more so, because, seeing that Fichte
( was the most skilful arguer, the feeling of defeat egged my
' spirit on even to bitterness, and my hereditary French warmth
6 fanned the flame. In my inmost soul I felt firmly convinced
* of the truth of my views ; but, to use Fichte's words, conviction
' had not yet ripened into expression. I took in, but could not
' express the light. Moreover, I had not yet arrived at that
* humble firmness in defence which beseems a Christian con-
' fessor especially against so exalted an enemy. From wrestling
* we nearly came to fighting. Our voices became higher and
( higher. Fichte's wife and son, used to regular hours, were
( astonished and somewhat alarmed when the clock struck one.
( This brought me to my senses, and I broke off, begging par-
4 don for having disturbed their night's rest, and still more
( for my unseemly talk with so great a man. Fichte replied,
' smiling, " Think you, my young friend, that I could care for
( you, if you did not forget the so-called proprieties of life when
' fighting for that which is dear to your soul?" ' As first, Reli-
gion generally saves him from the tendencies of Kleist and his
school ; and again, belief in revelation keeps him clear from the
spurious form of religion called natural, that of Hulsen and
his school; so here his mind is carried on, even more deeply,
and he fights manfully against the Pelagianism of Fichte.
And thus he continued for some time, happily occupied in
94 Life and Writings of Fouqui.
earnest thoughts and conversation, and in expressing what he
felt in his works. The Magic Ring, one of his wildest dreams,
and, as he says, a strange echo of his love for northern chivalry ;
Waldemar the Pilgrim, the Knight and the Peasants, and seve-
ral others followed in quick succession. It is interesting, too,
to find that, at this time, he wrote the Todesbund, or Deathbond,
remarkable for a peculiar view of penitence. To those of our
readers who have been somewhat startled by it, we will only
remark, that it was written at a time when, doubtless, his mind,
though rapidly becoming religious, was hardly sufficiently fixed
to keep him clear from certain false views on this most awful
subject. To these succeeded Thiodolf, which he considered his
most successful work, two tragedies, and many minor tales and
poems for various periodicals. The vent was indeed found, and
copiously enough the stream flowed. Nothing can show Fouque's
better nature more clearly than the following lines, written when
the storms were now again lowering over Prussia, when Napo-
leon's continued breaches of faith had excited a general feeling
of fear and uncertainty of the future, Berlin being in the
enemy's hand, and the King shut up in Potsdam:
' Thou Fount of all the fair and good,
Thou Fount of all the strong,
Breathing full soft from spray and bud,
Thundering in battle throng :
A festival and fane for Thee
All times and spots provide,
And always who will guided be
Thy hand shall surely guide.
And where my heart must sadly roam,
And where it fain would rest,
Thou know'st : the gleaming lamps of home,
And glory's stern behest.
How that within my soul entwine
A young child's smiling face,
And flames far, far from home, which shine
To burn away disgrace.
Worthily then, my Lord, I'll die
Of those who gave me birth,
Guard Thou from evil destiny
The dear ones of my hearth ;
For surely love of these is part
Of all true love of Thee,
As each bold thought that fills my heart
Has somewhat heavenly.
Life and Writings of Fouque. 95
And if Thy will, Lord, we pray,
Let peace and joy be ours,
And courtesy, with accents gay,
Still reign amid our bowers.
It may not be ; then give us still
'Mid gloom a cheering sun,
Eternal Love and Strength, Thy will,
Thy will, not mine, be done.
Wherever Thou wilt have me stand,
Firm there my post shall be,
Whether to wield the bloody brand,
Or harp of poesy.
Whether in toil or battle Thine,
Or Thine in soft repose,
Eternal rest shall there be mine,
Which toil nor battle knows. Amen.'
This, we need not say, is the highest development of Reli-
gion * Thy will be done.' Thus, from step to step, we have
traced the progress of his mind, first grasping, then contending,
now suffering, and, at length, the heart tranquillized.
And now let us cast our eye upon him actively engaged in
service. In 1813 he bought a sword, and was the very first
of the volunteers, when all were eager to answer the King's
call. From his station and age (thirty-six), he was chosen to
command a company. ( On a fine February morning he left his
( home, blessed by his wife, and held back by his weeping little
' daughter.' On May 2 came the Lutzen battle, and immediately
after the Prussian retreat into Bohemia. In the battle Fouque
lost his horse, and was nearly drowned, receiving a shock which
his constitution never entirely recovered. During this campaign
he played a part, strange to our phlegmatic English minds, yet
doubtless not a little serviceable to the more musical and ex-
citable Continental. He became the Tyrtaeus of the forces, and
was so famous for his stirring poetry, that General Gneissenau
introduced him under this character to Blucher. This notion of
the warrior poet he has carried out in one of his most beautiful
romances, Minstrel Love, to which we have before alluded, as
illustrating his life. He depicts a young minstrel fighting as gal-
lantly as the best, and at the same time cheering the whole army
by well-timed and spirited lays. We have already said that each
one of Fouque's writings seems to mirror the poet's heart. This
is the true description of them. They are not allegories, but
counterparts of ideas and deep emotions of his heart, which ap-
proach or draw away from the allegorical, in proportion as these
96 Life and Writings of Fouqu.
emotions and ideas are more directly, or indirectly, portrayed.
But our present object is not so much to dwell upon the works
themselves, as on the condition of mind which this harmonious
union of theory and action shows us in the author. We see the
poetical element in action. He is not the puling, sentimental,
half-witted, nervous being with which so many, not unjustly,
associate the name of Poet ; but a bold, manly knight, turning
his gift of poetry, like other of God's gifts, to its best account.
And does not this of itself show that the element which gave
birth to poetry in his mind must have been far other than that
which inspires poets in general, of a far deeper, wholesomer, and
more religious cast ? Poetry lacks reality, says the world. Look
at poets; they use fine words, talk much, and do little. And then
instance after instance is readily adduced Goldsmith, Dryden,
Thomson, Coleridge, in some measure, and many others, whose
poetry teems with fine sentiments, ennobling and true, and whose
lives show indolence, if nothing worse. And surely here the
world is not altogether wrong. It judges on a right principle,
though haply one carried to an illogical point. Now we conceive
the answer would be, to admit, in a great degree, the truth of the
assertion ; nay, even to admit that the want of reality in the poet's
life cannot but mar, and ought to mar, the effect of his words; but
to deny that the poetry of these men is the result of a high ele-
ment, a principle actively working in their breast ; in fact, to deny
that it is fair to judge of poetry by such as these. And then we
would point to men like Fouque, Herbert, or one who will occur
to most of our readers, as men whose poetry, being based on
high and holy principles, shows in action just as well as words.
Fouque's poetry, inasmuch as it is of hand as well as heart, is
manifestly the result of such as this. And, further, its origin
in the consciousness of the invisible world is shown by his words
and deeds, in contempt of danger, and soul-stirring "words to
others, in comforting words to himself. This is remarkably
exemplified in his prayer, after the disastrous battle of Dresden,
when, as he says, he even longed for death.
' Lord, Thy holy will be done !
Alas, it may not be
That I poor child of sinful man
Its workings here should see.
To Thee amid the tempest
My stricken head I rear ;
And fixed be this within my breast,
Faith here is eyesight there !'
( Prayer,' he continues, ' availed ; submission began to heal my
torn soul.' Or, again, the same feeling strikes us when we read
Life and Writings of Fouqu&. 97
that he consoled himself during the reverses of the campaign, by
writing at all spare moments a poem called ' Corona,' suggested
by a vision which haunted him of ' a woman, half Oriental,
' half European, whose face was at once attractive and repul-
' sive, sharp and gentle, like some of the portraits of the early
( Italian school,' in which he gave a poetical account of the
chief events of the war. We feel here again the practical use
of the poetical faculty, how the expression of it eases the mind.
But fortune was not to be for ever against Prussia. The
energy of the country, though for a time subdued, could not be
long kept down, and they were not slow to take advantage of
the weakness of the French. The victory of Kulm first cheered
them, where the Prussians, after a desperate struggle, remained
masters of the field. Then came the battles of Grossbeeren,
Katsbach, and Dennewitz, and, with the interval of a few weeks,
the decisive battle of Leipzig. But, before this, poor Fouque
had become thoroughly crippled. The effects of his sudden
chill at Lutzen now seized on him with renewed force. Most
violent cramps in the chest were continually bringing him to
the verge of death. And here again, in the midst of his agony,
we find him patient and self-controlling. It is no small
pain, under any circumstances, to see others actively en-
gaged in some work congenial to ourselves, and be hindered
from joining them. Still more when, as in Fouque's case, the
work was to end a campaign gloriously, to recover back lost
laurels from a foe so deservedly hateful as the French. Let the
reader, then, judge from the following lines how far our view of
his character has been founded on fact:
' Far from my dear ones shall my life depart,
Here on a foreign strand j
So be it ; this too with a ready heart
I offer you, my king and fatherland.
E'en now for you full many a gallant deed
This failing arm hath wrought ;
And still for you this heart again would bleed,
For you one lay have sought.
It may not be, so surely change has past
Over the Poet's head,
And this short breath of life which stays the last,
Is numbered with the dead.
I may not, dare not speak of wife and child,
Else would my swelling breast
Burst forth in tones of lamentation wild,
Which fain would be suppressed.
NO. XLIX. N.S. H
98 Life and Writings of Fouqut.
Haply while yet the Poet's grave is new,
An oaken twig shall spring
From the cold ground, last offering to you,
My fatherland and king.'
After a short recruiting at head-quarters, he returned and
joined his regiment the day before the great battle. f The
' General looked on my pale face, and said, " You are come too
6 soon ; you must speedily sink under the fatigue ; but I under-
' stand your feelings, and welcome." Soon the command, " For-
( ward," was given. Cannonading began. We heard the French
* word of command directed against our left wing. " Here goes !"
' nodded one stern face to another. When suddenly we saw the
( King slowly drawing near. A joyful hurrah was on our lips,
* but he stopped us. Was it that the enemy might not know
' the position of his cavalry reserve ? The officer went out of the
' ranks to receive the King's commands. With glowing and
' beaming face he answered, " I congratulate you on a battle
* won." What more was to be said ? Germany was now free to
f the Rhine. In much subsequent darkness and sorrow of my
( earthly pilgrimage this ray of light has refreshed me, and
( lightened my load, and stayed a murmuring thought. He who
( has been permitted to rejoice in such a light, should not he
' willingly hereafter take up that which is decreed him, to suffer
( in whatever troubled hours he may be ? ' Then followed the
pursuit, and solemn enough it must have been, a ride for many
miles among the dead and dying. His illness, however, increased
upon him. At length he could not mount into the saddle with-
out support, and one more bivouac would, said the army doctor,
have surely brought him to the grave. In the midst of his
illness, he was appointed Rittmeister to his regiment, almost, as
he says, a mockery, for the Rittmeister could not ride. At
length the French passed the Rhine, the pursuit was ended,
and Fouque returned to rest in Weimar, where Goethe was
f shining the central sun to many stars.' He was now so miserably
weakened, that it seemed almost impossible that he could re-
cover : yet, shattered and broken as he was, he enjoyed, he says,
these hours at Weimar, which seemed his last, like a soft even-
ing light. The King sent him the Order of S. John f for the
' high love he had manifested towards his king and fatherland,
' and added the rank of Major of Cavalry. It seemed as if the
' struggles of this earthly life were at length closed in one blissful
' harmony.'
And here we may be permitted to set before the reader one
or two passages from Minstrel Love, the produce of this gentle
autumnal light at Weimar :
Life and Writings of Fouquk. 99
' It has been often said, that a slow wasting disease of the body must
press heavily upon the soul, which sees its departure from the friendly
world approach step by step, and counts, as it were, the leaves of bloom
which drop one after the other. Where, however, no distorting pains
interfere, and where the departing one does not love too much that
which is called life, nor hate too much that which is called death, it
may not be so bad as is imagined. If we drink the last flask of a noble
wine with a pleasure which we knew not before, why not also these last
drops of the earthly being 1 In thus quietly gliding downwards we
meet with few of the cares and shocks of this lower world ; we have little
more to do than to pluck its flowers : a foretaste of the disembodied
state is breathing round us ; those who love us have more thought and
more affection for the departing one ; and those who do not love us, we
more lightly and easily pardon, regardful of the Scripture, ' forgive, as
we would be forgiven,' mindful of the short time which we have to pil-
grimage together; and where a tear flows from the eye, it flows
almost visibly, as pearl-seed into the life of Paradise. Whoever has ex-
perienced this gentle suffering will not deny us his assent. At all events,
it was truly so with Arnald, as slowly, slowly, he marched towards the
grave ....
* " I believe," said George, " none pass into sleep so softly and gently
as the poet." " Amen," said Arnald, in a subdued tone, and folded
his hands ; while his friend, without observing it, continued thus, with
increasing animation : " The poet's life, as far as I can see, who myself
am none, the poet's life has long before freed itself from the fetters of
the body, winged with native aspiration, and volatilized in its exalted
moments into pure sunlight and rainbow brightness ; so that, without
any effort, he flings off the heavy covering of earth, and floats up into
the kingdom which belongs to him from the right imparted to his soul
by Heaven." Arnald shook his head in smiling denial. " If you wise
people are right, who call the poet merely an inventor of pleasant tales,
with which reality has seldom anything to do, then you yourself have
become one in this moment. It is not so sweet and soft as you imagine.
The old mother, commonly called Nature, grasps after the poet with a
thousand arms j as she loves him dearly, so he in return loves her with
equal warmth ; and when seriously he thinks of thus parting from her,
he is weak and melancholy, and she not less so. Though, in the other
world, she may bloom more beautifully and unchangeably, he is yet
rooted to this earth, as the earth is to each flower. Oft, indeed, he
behaves as an impatient child, when a mother denies his wish, and obsti-
nately cries, ' I will leave this house altogether.' But only let the
mother seriously turn away, and exclaim, ( (3o ; I ask no more of you,'
and the obstinate heart melts. And however boldly we may bear up,
she has but to take us again in her arms, and we nestle, weeping, to her
breast, now doubly dear. But the voice of the Lord, praised for it be
His name to all eternity, the voice of the Lord wakes in us, and with
songs we ride out to many a glorious field, with songs we pass into
eternity : or, at last, by our own hearth, we feel that our daily work
is done, and lay us down with smiles to sleep : yet even then still holds
H 2
100 Life and Writings of Fouque.
the same * with songs we pass into eternity.' The swan may have
striven with many a bitter pang before he sings his chant of death ; but
with the first sound of that all pain has ceased ; and when we have
arrived at this, then all again is sweet and gentle, as you sup-
pose it." '
We cannot resist one more quotation from this exquisite
romance. It is the death-song of Arnald :
* As flows the stream with murmuring call
When close upon its rocky fall,
So creeps my soul with weary power
On the last step of its last hour.
Good ! Thou who from the seeds of birth
Didst call me to this life of earth,
Thou Spirit of Eternal Love,
call me into life above.
Many Thy gifts a minstrel's fire,
For war a sword, for love a lyre,
To triumph in the battle hour
To sing of love in Beauty's bower.
Thou gavest me pains with deep delight
A glorious morn, with shades of night ;
And now a fresh and laurelled grave
Within the land I helped to save.
Through the cold darkness of the tomb
The lights of Heaven freshly loom;
let me with my latest voice
In Heaven's boundless love rejoice!
And thou, earth, when all is done,
Lie lightly on thy minstrel son.'
Surely no words of ours can add to this. What can more
beautifully show the use of poetry in calming the mind, and
more fully answer the notion that poetry is unreal, and poets but
dreamers ? The true poet, the man whose words are from the
heart, who expresses in his TTOI^VIQ the result of an overpower-
ing emotion, surely finds in such expression the very highest
comfort. Is it not the obvious feeling to mourn at being thus
cut off in the height of youth and victory ? Yet here the prac-
ticalness of poetry interferes, and helps the poet to the truth.
And do we not trace throughout these holy words that keen
perception of the world of spirits which we have shown to be
peculiarly the bent of Fouque's mind ? Is it not this on which
his poetical expression grounds its comfort, 'the foretaste of
the disembodied state,' the world of spirits 'breathing around
us?'
At this point, as he says, his poetical life seems brought to a
Life and Writings of Fouqiit. 101
close; his constitution was enfeebled to that degree, that it
seemed impossible for him ever to engage in active pursuits of
any kind ; and though he so far recovered as to be able to return
to Nennhausen, yet his doctor warned him that either his strength
would leave him entirely, and he would gradually sink into the
arms of death, or that, after a longer or shorter interval, he must
prepare for a very severe attack, as the climax of his disorder ;
and four years afterwards this actually happened at Berlin. His
attack seems to have been something like paralysis. At last, he
lost, for a time, all consciousness ; and so completely did his
usually tenacious memory fail him, that even on recovering and
betaking himself to his accustomed studies, he forgot entirely
his writing of the day before, not even recognising it as his own,
but criticising it as the work of an indifferent stranger. At
length, however, first his body, then his mind, attained, the one
partially, the other completely, strength and health. Previously
to this crisis, he performed a vow which he had made before the
battle of Lutzen, and peculiar enough it was. It was, if he
should return with honour to Nennhausen, solemnly to conse-
crate his sword in the village church. With no small self-denial
(for now the allies were crossing the Rhine), and kept to his
purpose by the remembrance of King Clovis dedicating his white
horse in the cathedral of Tours, he hung it up over a shield,
with an inscription explanatory of the circumstance : f Farewell,
6 then,' he says, ( thou noble sword ; remind the villagers of their
' old friend, Fouque ; and when years have passed away, join
' with him, their old minister, his old and cherished friend.'
While his health was thus, as it seemed, fading away at
Nennhausen, his mind seems to have teemed with those gentle
thoughts of which we have given a specimen in an extract
from Minstrel Love. ( This, my weak health, continued to open
' to me more and more the world of spirits ; else, perhaps, had
* earthly life become too dear to me, and scarcely had I freed
( myself from the world of laurels and flowers.' And now his
life passed most smoothly on. His very weakly condition, brought
on by loyal service to his country, naturally disarmed hostile
criticism, while the striking and original thoughts put beautifully
forward in his romances and dramas, made him well known to all
Germany. c Outwardly pleasant were these moments, but full
' of inward danger the danger of good words from all the world.
' And yet I wondered not at this. I meant well to all. Why
6 should not all mean well of me ? Indeed, in those days I
' wished earnestly for a skilful adversary, that I might measure
' myself with him, and then try the power given me by God.
' Child of man, that belongs to the gifts which are wont to come
' to thee without thy seeking them/ . . . ' Still,' he continues,-
102 Life and Writings of Fouqui.
amidst the happiness of being regarded well by all, the mys-
terious warning of Scripture would rise in my mind " Beware,
when all speak well of you." This word was ever knocking at
the door of my heart ; but therein dwelt too much vanity to
suffer it to enter.'
The last point in the Biography of Fouque to which we would
call the reader's attention is this his position among the literary
men of the day. This was, as we have shown, very peculiar. High
sentiments were in Germany divorced from religion. Young
poets thought it fine to talk of fatherland, as a sort of golden
calf before which to fall down and worship, and run into all
sorts of mad excesses. In the name of fatherland, i. e. their
own, often selfish, view of freedom and sublimity, any sort of
atrocity might be committed with impunity. A man could not,
as they thought, love his country and God at once. And when
Fouque fought manfully, and wrote noble sentiments of freedom,
his own friends were not prepared to find him also a thoroughly
religious man. Thus it happened that, at a meeting of literary
men, at the opening of which one of his songs had been sung
with great applause, when he, in turn, proposed a toast, with the
view of uniting all, a general uproar arose, and showed him a
wasp's nest, on which, unawares, he had trodden. 'People,' he
says, 'have often asked me what was the subject of dissension.
' I have always answered freely, and will now say willingly
6 " You all find fault with me for what each believing Christian
e holds for such I am according as God gives me strength,
4 and as He has placed me here below. And upon these princi-
( pies, and these alone, i. e. as men believe in God, and therefore
( are of Godlike mind, all real equality is based before Him. In
( this way, whether a man be peasant, burgher, noble, or king,
' priest or layman, it is all one and the same. This (of being
' Christian men together) is the unity, yea, the oneness which
e now in the most various privileges and duties, if faithfully per-
f ceived and acknowledged, unfolds itself gloriously in blessed
' harmony in a choral song, tuning itself for heaven. Men can,
f eternity cannot, deceive ; the spirit of the times can, the Spirit
( of God revealed from eternity cannot, deceive. Here is my
( open confession." ' And so again when, after the death of
Kotzebue, he wrote some warning verses to young Germany,
showing the full hideousness of the spirit of Voltaire, that fearful
spirit of infidelity, and, we may add, poltroonery, which then
began to run riot, he adds, in answer to the taunt, that he was
behind the spirit of the age : ( I admit it, good people ; I admit
' it freely. I do not recognise the spirit of the age for a fugle-
( man, whom in each step one is to follow, but for one of those
' spirits who must be tried by the word of God, whether they be
Life and Writings of Fouqu6. 103
' of God or no. Not treachery, not a lie, not murder, not hatred,
f but heavenly and brotherly love, and truth, and faith, are from
< God.'
But not only the infidel part of the community thought
they had reason to find fault with the brave and manly poet, treat-
ing him as one who had wittingly played them false ; who had talked
of freedom, and yet felt bound, by obedience to God's laws ; had
written fine and high thoughts, yet was tame enough to own the
Bible ; but, somehow, he did not suit those who now began to
claim him as their own, the ' truly pious ' * of the generation.
( Many of those well-meaning persons began to consider and
' declare, that any direction of the poetical gift towards what
* they called worldly matters was sinful. Many representations
* came from this quarter to Fouque, to devote his muse entirely
' to Religion ; and when he declined this, anathema was hurled at
f him by some openly in words, by others in withdrawal from
6 the now distasteful society of their brother.' The fact was,
that Fouque's mind was far removed from either of these he
was far more religious than either. He saw plainly that Reli-
gion was not to remove a man from the world, but to keep him
unspotted in the world ; that poetry was a reality, and a practical
duty of a Christian's every-day life ; in fact, that man can make
no greater mistake than to imagine that the gifts of God can be
used so as to glorify Him only by putting them in what is called
a strictly religious form. And when they accused him of light-
mindedness, they erred beyond expression. ' FouqueTs mind was
far too serious in matters of religion to throw aside considera-
tions of this sort by mere commonplace worldly sayings. He
wrestled hard with the difficulty before the presence of God,
and God alone knows of the struggles of his heart. Instead of
casting away his worldly vocation as a poet, he acquired a
c strengthening or elevation of his gift, and henceforth he let it
( be heard much oftener than in earlier days, in spiritual expres-
( sions and songs.' And is not this that which the great Master
teaches ? ' It has been His gracious purpose to turn all that is
f ours from evil to good .... He purposed to save and to change
' us, all that belongs to us our reason, our affections, our pur-
' suits, our relations in life, He needs nothing put aside in His
f disciples, but all sanctified. Every faculty of the mind, every
' design, pursuit, subject of thought, is hallowed in its degree by
( the abiding vision of Christ, as Lord, Saviour, and Judge. All
* This puritanical bias of that age, which made the religious world, as it styles
itself, look with suspicion on the revival of 'Tales of the Olden Time' hy the Ro-
mantic school, is well shown up by Tieck in the ' Betrothing,' a novel, which is not
improbably the prototype of a similar class among ourselves. Those who have read
the works of the author of " The Fairy Bower" will know to what we allude.
104 Life and Writings of Fouqui.
6 solemn, reverent,, thankful, and devoted feelings, all that is
6 noble, all that is choice in the regenerate soul, all that is self-
' denying in conduct and zealous in action, is drawn forth and
' offered up by the Spirit as a living sacrifice to the Son of
6 God.' It needs not that the gift of poetry should be turned
solely into one source, but that the whole stream, with all
its tributaries, should be holy and pure. Poetry is Catho-
lic, and has to do with the whole drama of life, not with the
thoughts and feelings often isolated and unintelligible of
one particular section. Its use is to point out the true, and
to draw men's hearts to it, in whatever form it dwell. It is
the overpowering emotion of the heart, yearning to express the
true and noble, whether found in chivalry and heroic deeds, the
depths of the composition of the hearts of men, the mighty things
hidden within the form of the natural world, or in the lights
rapidly passing by, gleaming from another, which we call the
invisible world. Wherever the true and holy lies, and in what-
ever shape, it is quite certain that some soul of man will be
found to vibrate in unison with it. That vibration the world
calls poetry. If Fouque, at the suggestion of his friends, had
given up that expression of the true and holy, which was natural
to him, and betaken himself to what is popularly called religious
poetry, the result would probably have been something like the
small publications now so unhappily common among ourselves.
We have little to add to this sketch. Our object throughout
has been to call the reader's attention to two points first, the
quality of poetry itself; and, secondly, the peculiar quality of
that of Fouque. And in this view we have endeavoured to con-
nect together the different portions and events of his life, being
fully convinced that, in the true poet, hand and heart must
surely go together. We do not deny that poets may be bad
men ; like all the gifts of God, the gift of poesy may be misap-
plied ; but their poetry, if they be true poets, will more or less,
like that of Byron's, display the inherent badness of the man.
But of those, who like Fouque, show an instinctive appreciation
of the true and beautiful, wherever to be found, how can we
speak better than in the words of our great poet ?
' Sovereign masters of all hearts,
Know ye, who hath set your parts !
He who gave you breath to sing,
By whose strength ye sweep the string,
He hath chosen you to lead
His hosannas here below,
Mount and claim your glorious meed,
Linger not with sin and woe.'
105
ART, V. History of the Consulate and the Empire. By M. TRIERS.
Translated by D. FORBES CAMPBELL, Esq. 3 Vols. London:
Colburn. 1845.
THESE volumes, on their appearance, excited an extraordinary
sensation in Paris. No book, however great its interest, has the
power of doing this in our own capital. The talkers and the
readers there are a distinct class, and before the reading class
has communicated the impulse to the talking class, the gloss of
novelty is off. Many books with us obtain great vogue and ex-
tensive popularity none agitate and occupy society. M. Thiers'
book had not to win its way gradually to notice to gain atten-
tion, and penetrate slowly through the various social ramifications,
but at once it seemed to take every thing and every body by
storm; for one week, the clubs, coffee-houses, circles, saloons,
great and small, talked of nothing else. The feuilleton was for-
gotten, and the journals did nothing but review and extract from
f The Consulate and Empire.' It is true the excitement lasted
but its week, M. Thiers being superseded by Horace Vernet and
his ' Taking of Smahla,' and he by General Tom Thumb and his
carriage-and-four. But this brilliant launch into the world, and
a literary success almost unprecedented, though they do not
make a permanent reputation, yet certainly do not preclude the
book from attaining one, if it deserve it. This is a question
which may very naturally be asked, when we call to mind the
immense number of Histories of Napoleon which have been
written, and are now forgotten.
This seems, justly or unjustly, to be the fate of Sir Walter
Scott's Life of Napoleon. Yet that was surrounded at its first
appearance with as splendid promise, and excited as much atten-
tion throughout Europe, as the present. The richest, the easiest,
the most celebrated narrator of the century, had undertaken to
write the history of his own times. Goethe's Letters give evi-
dence of the interest with which this ( romance of the dead lion,'
as they called it, was received in Germany:
' As soon as I saw it announced, I felt what a great gift this Life of
Napoleon would be to me, and therefore 1 let people first babble them-
selves tired about it ; but I can now contain myself no longer, and have
boldly set to work on the book. If you have time and inclination to
retrace in tranquillity the remarkable current of events in which we
106 Tkiers* History of the Consulate and Empire.
have been hurried along for fifty years, read through this work from
beginning to end. A man of sound,, vigorous understanding, with the
thoughts and feelings of a citizen, whose youth fell in the period of the
French Revolution; who, in his best years, observed this momentous
event with the eyes of an Englishman, watched and viewed it in all its
bearings ; this man, the best narrator of his time, gives himself the
trouble to place before us the whole series of events in bis own peculiarly
clear and distinct manner.' Goethe to Zelter, Nov. 1827.
Very great merit must be allowed to Scott's Life. In the
happy art of telling a story in the most interesting way, it is,
perhaps, inferior to none of its author's most celebrated works ;
and its general correctness, making such allowance as must
always be made for one who writes the history of a country not
his own, notwithstanding it has been heavily impeached by
French writers, has most honourably stood the brunt of twenty
years' criticism, and the publication of several additional sources
of information.
With all this there is that about Scott's Life which, even
before M. Thiers' publication, had caused it to be put aside,
as not the Life of Napoleon which one would select. This
is, in short, the narrow view which its author took of the
men and events of the Revolution. The most exciting scenes
of Scott's youth had been the Edinburgh Light Horse, the
reviews and sham-fights of the Musselburgh Sands; and he
never lost the impression. To the last he saw the Revolution
with the eyes of Wyndham or Perceval, and he took a mere
contemporary view of it. These impressions, though softened
by age, good sense, and above all, by the reception he met with
in Paris in 1826, have still given their colouring to Scott's work.
It is very far from offering such a calm and comprehensive ap-
preciation of Napoleon and his policy as can alone satisfy the
present generation, which is now beyond the reach of the pas-
sions of the time.
Does M. Thiers supply such a history ?
It must be observed, that this is almost the first attempt by
any French writer of eminence to give a general history of the
Empire. The innumerable publications to which we have alluded
have been partial or personal history; biography, or rather
memoir, recounting only such facts as were known to the writer
himself, contributions towards history, rather than history.
M. Thiers has forsaken this ground, the position of a contem-
porary, and taken that of posterity posterity, whose function
it is to judge. He reviews and resumes the whole cycle of
memoirs, and founds his history on a collation of all the sources.
The English translator claims for him the merit of having ' pro-
cured from exclusive sources the choicest materials for his present
Thiers^ History of the Consulate and Empire. 107
work.' (Preface, p. vii.) This assertion, we imagine, is not
true to any considerable extent. The archives were thrown
open to Sir W. Scott, who, however, made too hasty and cursory
an inspection of them. He was barely ten days in Paris (from
October 29 to November 7, 1826). And his Life, though during
the progress of composition it was expanded very much beyond
the dimensions at first proposed, yet was, he acknowledges, on
too confined a plan to embrace even all the materials that were
in his hands. M. Capefigue, however, consulted nearly all the
depositories of state papers in Europe for his history. M. Cape-
figue is a laborious compiler, one who, like Mr. G. P. R. James,
causes us astonishment by the quantity he writes. Be the quality
as wretched as it may, it is wonderful that such a number of
grammatical sentences should have proceeded from one man's pen.
But it is possible that, even after Capefigue and Thibaudeau,
something may have been left for M. Thiers to glean. But he
does not claim for his work this species of merit. To give new
facts, to put forth new information, is not the object with which
he writes. He aims at producing an harmonious whole, a con-
nected history, in which the events shall bear only the promi-
nence assigned by their own importance, and not by the writer's
having hit on a document hitherto unpublished : he has doubt-
less largely consulted, during his four years' labour, the public
archives, but it is to perfect and fill up the outline in his own
mind, not to extract matter like ordinary book-manufacturers.
A German historian, M. Raumer, for example, copies out
every syllable that he can find bearing on his period, translates
it, and prints it at full length, with commentary more verbose
and enigmatical in its language than the state papers it illus-
trates, and thus produces his original work on some one's life
and times. M. Thiers may have gone through equal labour,
but its result is perceived not in its being spread out over weary
pages in infinite verbiage, but in the completeness of his picture,
in that mastery of his subject which familiarity with its details
confers. If he occasionally relates a fact communicated by an
original witness, it is given not because it is new, but because it
illustrates what he has in hand at the time. Hence he rigidly
excludes anecdote, old as well as new. Napoleon's life, more
than that of most great men, abounded in pithy speeches and
piquant traits. But besides that many of these, and some of
the most characteristic, are apocryphal, they degrade history to
the level of a newspaper report, and have been especially the
plague of that of Napoleon. Coleridge used to complain of a
set of people who thought they accounted for the French Revo-
lution by anecdotes. So closely have some of these stories
engrafted themselves on the events they relate to, that it must
108 T filers History of the Consulate and Empire.
have required no little boldness to resolve upon their banishment,
as M. Thiers has done.
But if M. Thiers is not the gossiping chronicler or anecdote -
monger, it is not to be inferred that he is therefore the philoso-
phical historian, a doctrinaire, bent on promulgating a political
theory in the guise of a history. His book is what it professes
to be, a genuine 6 History of the Consulate and Empire.' The
writer's character, that most unamiable and suspicious one of a
political adventurer, who has raised himself by the sheer energy
of talent to the highest station in the kingdom, might lead to
other anticipations. But there is not throughout the smallest
symptom of effort, of fine writing, of display of the author, or
the exhibition of conscious talent. Close, succinct, and business-
like, the narrative marches on, intent only on telling what it has
to tell, and not stopping to make reflections. Not Ca3sar himself
sticks more closely to his story. Civil events justly related give
out at once their true lesson ; when the historian turns aside to
question and put them to the torture, they too often give false
evidence. It is the work not of the laborious pedant, nor the
clever speculator, but of the statesman. Neither too far removed
in point of time from the period he describes, to be obliged to
exhaust his forces in ascertaining facts, nor too near to it to
write under the influence of party spirit, he describes parties,
passions, and interests with which he has himself had practically
to deal. For the men and the parties of 1830, however we may
regard them as a new generation and a new world, were yet
moulded by the influences of the empire ; so that his political
career gave him not merely the usual advantages which an
observer may draw from action, but also that of having to act
among the results and relics of that which he proposes to de-
scribe. When a statesman writes history, the very best period
he can choose is that immediately preceding his own age.
Such being the merit of the work in point of execution, let
us see what is the value of the views, political or other, which it
contains. We have said that the author does not stop to dog-
matize or make remarks ; but still, as must be expected, one
system of politics is dominant throughout, and guides the pen
when it does not appear on the surface. Those who are
acquainted with the ( History of the Revolution,' and are thence,
as is natural, led to compare the two, will find a remarkable
difference of tone between them, a difference which age and the
possession of power alone are not sufficient to account for, though
they may have concurred in producing it. It is twenty years
since the ( History of the Revolution' was published. The object
of the young and aspiring author was no less than to vindicate
and revive the doctrines of '91. There was at that time no such
Thiers^ History of the Consulate, and Empire. 109
thing as a Republican party. There were many, indeed, dis-
satisfied with Charles X., some who wished for a revolution, but
these were rather Liberals of vague and speculative views, off-
shoots of Italian and German Carbonarism, than children of the
Revolution. Some few of the old Republicans, such as the
Abbe Gregoire, might be still living ; but they had no followers,
they had survived their party, and, still more, their reputation.
The atrocities of the reign of terror had cast a shade over the
whole movement, and all parties, Liberals as well as Royalists,
were agreed to forget the Revolution. M. Thiers undertook to
resuscitate and repopularise its principles. Rightly distinguish-
ing between the Jacobins, the men of '93, and the Constituent
Assembly, he vindicated the vast achievements and the high
aims of this body, showing, what had been forgotten, that so far
from their cause being that of the Jacobins, these were their
greatest enemies, who had but marred their work. Not, how-
ever, that even the Jacobins were wholly condemned. The
Committee of Public Safety and the Convention had been re-
garded with unjust prejudice ; its crimes were great, but they
had been exaggerated ; the epoch had been disfigured, partly
through fear, partly through ill-will. In M. Thiers' pages it
assumed the air of a slandered, an injured party; the Republican
era, from which all eyes had been long averted as a scene of
blood, strife, and confusion, resumed an appearance of order and
regularity it was reconstituted and people began to wonder
how they had ever fancied it such a chaos ; now it seemed only
like any other period, having its settled order of events inter-
rupted by its peculiar irregularities. A few flowers might be
thrown upon the victims, but the pomp and colours of victory
were bestowed on the executioners and the scaffold. The young
generation, alienated from the Restoration, but having hitherto
had no point of attachment, caught eagerly at these new doc-
trines, or rather at the old doctrines revived. They regarded
themselves, indeed, not as innovators, but as restorers of '93.
The ' History of the Revolution,' then, was the vindication,
or rather the apotheosis of the old Republicans. What has be-
come of this in the ' History of the Consulate and Empire ?'
In the first place, it is obvious that it is impossible to sympa-
thize fully and entirely both with the Republic and the Empire.
The Empire was the contradiction and denial of the former, and
was founded upon its extinction. It is true that Napoleon
always professed great deference for the men of '91, and carried
out many of their plans ; but the one main principle on which
all they did rested constitutional liberty he completely crushed.
Their social and administrative reforms were upheld, while it
was the fashion at the Imperial Court to smile at their political
110 Thiers History of the Consulate and Empire.
theories, their dreams of classical Republics. If, then, a man
would write the annals of the Empire con amore, he must put
aside all inclinations for the Constituent Assembly. M. Thiers
does write con amore of the Empire. If his former work was an
apotheosis of the Republic, the present is an apotheosis of Na-
poleon; the glories and splendours of the Consulate (for the
volumes yet published do not extend beyond 1802) are painted
in more firm and glowing colours than the tempests of '89 and
'90, and the enthusiasm of the mature ex-minister for Napoleon
is more ardent than that of the young aspirant was for Mirabeau.
In what way, then, does M. Thiers reconcile his present with
his former creed ? How does he contrive to maintain the im-
perial regime without sacrificing his inclinations for the consti-
tution of the year 1 ?
If we rightly comprehend the policy which was introduced
into the administration of France by Napoleon when First
Consul, we shall see how the writer is enabled to unite two
such seemingly opposite sympathies.
In the almost boundless range of subjects on which Napoleon's
transcendant genius was exercised, and the dazzling variety of
his achievements and projects, it seems at first as if no general
guiding and governing principle could be discerned ; or rather
it seems as though, at the summit of all systems, he had seized
into his own hands not only the reins of government in his own
country, but the laws and springs by which all action, of what-
ever sort, is accomplished, and, equally master of all, regulated
and ordered them according to the nature and properties of each.
Other great men have devoted the energies of life to the elabo-
ration and enforcement of some one idea, to the perfection of
some one particular branch of art, or the exhaustion of some
special sphere of action ; and this is the characteristic of genius,
as distinct from talent, which is a facility of adaptation to many
different sorts of things. Talent implies versatility, it takes up
with whatever comes in its way to be done, enters with readiness
into new modes and ideas, and wields with equal ease machinery
of the most different kinds. Genius is stubborn, uncomplying ;
occupied with its own ideas, it will not stoop to learn what has
no interest for it. Conscious of secrets, and a power which no
existing systems can bear, it disdains to be initiated into the
petty artifices by which the machine of actual life and politics is
regulated. Hence great genius is often found accompanying
much narrowness of mind, and the greatest men have been the
most powerless and incapable in action ; while, on the other hand,
the men of most success in conduct have been men of mere
talent men of expedients, deficient in general views men of
110 principles. In Napoleon these wholly distinct faculties,
Thiers' History of the Consulate and Empire. Ill
genius and talent, were united in a greater degree than perhaps
in any other man. He was not only great, but original, in every-
thing ; not in his own sphere only, but in everything he touched
alike ; so that, indeed, it is difficult to assign him any sphere
narrower than the whole compass of human action. In each
department his sagacity invented and originated ; and his talent
was the only one which could carry through his own daring
ideas.
In an intelligence so diversified and so flexible we should not
expect to find any ruling law, any dominant principle of action,
such as masters while it vivifies the genius of other great men,
urging them on a prescribed career apparently in spite of them-
selves. But as it is in physical nature, where the most prodigal
and fantastic variety cannot escape the classification of science,
so in the still more perplexing complexity of the human mind,
no character so capricious, arbitrary, and multiform, but may be
brought under some general rules. There are some who have
attempted to find this common denominator, in Napoleon's case,
in self-interest. They maintain that he applied his prodigious
powers to govern France solely for his own interest ; and by
this simple answer they think the whole problem solved. But
it is not solved. First, because the assertion is not true. It is
not intended to lay claim for Napoleon to a disinterested
patriotism, or even to assert that he did not end by becoming
intensely selfish ; but it was not true in the early part of his
career. The characteristic of selfishness is caution ; it is not
compatible with daring and hazardous effort, with ardent aspira-
tions after glory : the supposition is negatived even by the care-
less exposure of his person in his early battles. And, secondly,
even though true, it is too general a proposition; it is not enough
to assign self as a motive, for that is no more than might be said,
according to the very same parties, of every one else in the world.
If we were to grant that his own greatness was the one object
before Napoleon's eyes in all his undertakings, we should not be
at all nearer answering the question. Were there any general
political views according to which his measures were conceived,
and his administration regulated ?
Such there undoubtedly were, and we would point to the first
years of the Consulate, as the period from which these principles
may be collected ; the period, in short, embraced in the present
volumes, as especially worthy of the study of the philosophical
politician, as much so as the Italian campaign is by the soldier.
And it is more peculiarly instructive to us, as having a most
direct bearing on our present condition and circumstances.
For it was the genius of the First Consul that conceived, or
at least first practised, and upon a scale, and with a success and
112 Thiers* History of the Consulate and Empire.
6clat which have never been equalled since, that very system of
policy which is now adopted universally by the ministers of all
the constitutional states in Europe, and which is indeed the only
one which can be adopted with any hope of permanence in such
states. This is, the principle of governing without what are
called principles ; or rather of continuing the administrative
functions of the body politic, while cutting off entirely its poli-
tical functions ; allowing the state a social existence, and deny-
ing it an ideal life.
There is such a thing as a Science of Politics. To this belongs
the division of States into monarchies, aristocracies, demo-
cracies, &c. with the various arrangements which each of
these classes admits, and the modes of taxation, representa-
tion, &c., proper to each. It is true that no existing States are,
or can be, exact copies of such abstract polities, any more than
straight lines or right angles exist in matter. But in a State
whicn will not admit at all of the application of abstract prin-
ciples, which cannot be said to have a constitution, in which
laws and institutions are a chaos of contradiction and inconsis-
tency, in which neither one, the many, or the few, can be said
to be the source or the possessors of power in such a State, how
can a Statesman hold, or act upon any theory of politics, or do
anything else but continue the machine in the same anomalous
state in which it came into his hands, incapable of applying a
remedy to any, even its most ruinous deficiencies ? His only
resource is to deny the science itself, or to deny its applicability,
to meet each new emergency by some new expedient, and so to
adjourn from day to day the dissolution momentarily impending.
Or, to put the same policy in another point of view. The
idea of a State is that of a large family, that all its members
should be of the same mind, should think the same thing. This
perfect harmony and agreement, this complete ( idem velle atque
idem nolle,' was sought to be attained in the old Greek republics
by continual expulsion or massacre of the dissident minority.
Opposition of opinion or interest within the bosom of the State
they would not tolerate ; it destroyed, to their view, the being of
the State. But experience shows that entire uniformity of
opinions and aim cannot be established in any society ; that,
reduce the numbers of which it is composed as low as you will,
you cannot reach it ; nay, that hardly any two men can be found
who agree in everything. It must be enough then for the being
of the State if, in all main and essential points, in all the great
and vital interests of the community, there be between its
members unity of feeling and purpose if, abstracting from
innumerable lesser differences, it can be brought to act together
in matters that concern the whole nation. But it is obvious
Thiers' History of the Consulate and Empire. 113
that there are limits to this divergence ; there are points, irre-
concilable difference on which must be fatal to national life.
And as it is impossible to fix the point at which these limits
have been reached, political union may have been fatally broken
long before it is discovered ; and the nation may have passed
through slow decay to death, while its social system remains
undisturbed. Then is actually realized that condition of the
body politic, which is the highest conception some theorists are
able to form of it, that it resembles, namely, any other voluntary
association of men who unite in action for some one specific
purpose, such temporary coalition implying no harmony of senti-
ment, or fusion of will. The specific purpose, they say, in the
case of the State, is the protection of life and property. Men
unite in the laws by which this is secured, and this is enough ; all
beyond is out of the cognizance of the State, and ought to be
left to individual discretion. Writers, such as Dr. Arnold,
and Mr. Gladstone, have thought to refute this material theory
on abstract grounds. But on the appeal to facts, the theory is
amply vindicated. For such is the actual present condition of
every nation in Europe, in a greater or less degree, in proportion
as its government is more or less free. Opinion is broken up,
not into two or three great sections, but almost into units nay,
men have no stable opinions ; they are the creatures of every
passing hour, and they have no faith in the very doctrines they
seem to be adopting. It is not that the high and cardinal ques-
tions of human existence are neglected ; on the contrary, specu-
lation is rife in those regions : but we are employed in raising an
endless succession of fleeting theories, which their authors are
the first to retract, in building showy castles of cards which
we dare not inhabit, and drawing paper schemes to which we
have not courage to conform our practice.
In such a condition of things, what ground is there for the
Statesman to move upon ? For a -scientific statesman, for one
who believes in a truth in Politics, and aims at establishing and
enforcing that truth on others none. Let him attempt to unite
the nation in any common expression of that higher truth with
which alone man's immortal part is concerned, and support falls
from under him like handfuls of sand. He must give up his
^belief, or the government. For others are ready to take his
place, who will be content to unite opinion, and the national
energy in those directions in which alone it admits of being
united, the material interests.
This was the task which the First Consul undertook for
France, and performed with a triumphant success, which was
only inferior to the skill and talent which secured it. This is
the policy which may be learned from studying the first years
NO. XLIX. N.S. I
114 Timers' History of the Consulate and Empire.
of his administration, and which, as being the only choice that
the modern statesman has, make the Consular administration so
valuable an object of study. For we should have a very false
idea of Napoleon if we were to look upon his military exploits
as the prominent and characteristic features of his history, as
they certainly are the most striking and w r orld-famous. If we
did, we must class him only with Alexander, or with CharlesXII.
But war, with him, was merely a subordinate instrument towards
a more comprehensive end. His victories were, after all, only
the moving power with which he worked one section of his
cabinet, the Foreign department ; and though the whole powers
of his mind might for the moment be thrown into the campaign,
yet in the vast compass of his policy it formed but one item
among many of quite equal importance, and which received in
their turn quite an equal share of his attention.
To achieve great things it is not enough to be a great man ;
he must come exactly at the crisis that demands his peculiar
powers. This was eminently the case with Napoleon. Had
he come upon the stage in the earlier years of the Revo-
lution, he might still have been the victorious general, or been
renowned in some other province ; but he would not have been
the man he was, the man who made France his own, and then,
by means of it, had nearly conquered Europe. He gained
France ; gained ascendency over the minds of his countrymen,
the most absolute mastery over their wills, by their voluntary
surrender, that was ever achieved by man. Of all the various
descriptions of power that may be gained, none can compare
with this. A military despot makes himself obeyed by force of
arms, and is feared and hated. An autocratic constitution the
most ancient, Russia, or Turkey, produces but submissive slaves,
the tameness of passive obedience. But to command the active
and enthusiastic obedience of millions, to fascinate them till
their wills are concentrated into the one will of the magician,
collected into it as rays of light into one focus, deprived of all
that was individual in them, except their energy, creates a power
in the moral world, before which none other can stand, one
which is very rarely gained in any considerable degree by man,
by none to such an extent as by Napoleon. It is a power
indeed in the moral world, like that of the Titans in the phy-
sical, ruinous to him who gains it ; too overwhelming to find an
adequate antagonist among men, it leads him to make war upon
heaven. Napoleon fell a victim to the disease of the old Greek
tyrants, YBPI2.
There was then a favourable conjunction of affairs without,
met by an aptitude from within, contributing to put this power
into the hands of the First Consul. This peculiar crisis was
ThierJ History of the Consulate and Empire. 1 15
the total disorganization of society in France. It was not
merely that all existing law, precedent, or barrier of distinction,
had been thrown down ; that the constitution had been broken
to pieces, that the institutions on which society reposes had been
swept away, and the usages which support practice had been
abolished : that public credit was null, that the State was, or had
been insolvent, that there was little revenue, no commerce, that
the roads were infested with brigands, that the armies were
unpaid at home, and unfortunate abroad; that, in short, all the
symptoms of a total dissolution of the body politic were rife
all this, and much more than this, was true. But these were but
the material evils, so to say, which the sick State had to complain
of. They would furnish an admirable field for a talented man
of business to set to rights, could he once get the position and
power to set about so doing. But there lay the difficulty.
There was no lack of able men who could have righted all these
administrative evils, frightful as they were, had there been a
standing place for them. But, in order to reach a position from
which to bind up the material wounds, it was necessary to heal
a much deeper sore, that with which the national mind was
afflicted. This was, in fact, the source and parent of all the
external symptoms of disorder ; this once removed, their cure
would follow of itself; but, till this was reached, it was impos-
sible even to attempt to eradicate the others. Before the
physician could approach to prescribe for his patient's body, he
must gain the command of his mind.
The disease that had seized on the mind of the French nation
was mistrust, want of confidence, not in men only, nor even in
parties only, but in politics in systems. What else could
be expected after the mad enthusiasm Avith which they had
thrown themselves into the arms of so many systems in succession,
and found them all equally helpless and impracticable. They
were sick, not merely of convulsions and disorder, but of the
very remedies which, ten years before, they had thought were
to cure everything constitution-making, and theoretical polities.
They cared for neither republic nor monarchy, so that iliey could
get order, and a solid executive.
In this state of opinion General Bonaparte came forward.
He was the very man wanted. Able to administer each depart-
ment better than even the special men in each, his known talent,
already proved by success, and his military renown, were the
first elements of public confidence. But all this would not have
availed, had it not been for the general conviction that he was a
man of no party. He was not only entirely unconnected with
all actual parties, neither royalist, republican, nor partizan of the
Directory, but it was felt that he was not at heart inclined to
i 2
116 ThierJ History of the Consulate and Empire.
any one of the prevalent political creeds, that he worshipped in
the inmost shrine of his heart no ideal constitution. In the
temper in which France then was, the most just and valuable
measures would have been viewed with distrust, if they had
proceeded from any one who could have been suspected of
wishing to turn them ultimately to the profit of some one of the
many forms of government which had then their partisans. It
was the footing on which young General Bonaparte claimed the
adhesion of the nation, that he was a man of no party, of no
principles ; but that he proposed that, merging all such visionary
distinctions, all should unite in furthering the common good of
France. He hated doctrines ; not this, that, or the other, but
all general principles, as such ; politicians who entertained such,
he held in the greatest aversion, calling them f ideologists ; ' and
though he would sometimes take pleasure in an argument with
them in the salons, he held them unfit to be admitted to office.
This dislike of systematic doctrine has been indeed shared by
many indeed it is common to all men of the world ; but it took
a peculiar shape in Napoleon's mind. From the elevated position
he occupied, with an unlimited field of action opening before
him, and unlimited means of accomplishment at his command,
it seemed a mere weakness of mind to fetter these large energies
by tying down one's exertions by the adoption of any set of
connected opinions. Administrative success, the conciliation of
the jarring views and passions of conflicting parties, the devising
the measures, and the mode of carrying them, likely to reunite
the suffrages of the greatest numbers, or of the most influential
persons in a State, here is the true field of the politician: to
hang round his neck the millstone of a speculative creed in
politics or morals, is voluntarily and needlessly to add to diffi-
culties always sufficiently great whenever our fellow-men are
the materials on which we have to work. To sell oneself to a
party, is the resource of the weak, of those who, shunning
inactivity, feel themselves impotent to cope single-handed with
society ; but to bind oneself a slave to a set of abstract dogmas
is a greater weakness still it is to incur all the servitude, without
the support, which the former conduct yields.
And we shall be better able to appreciate the wisdom of these
views, if we will look for a few moments deeper into this matter.
There are, in all, but two lines of policy practicable. One is
that we have just been describing. Under all its disguises it is
founded on the uniform plan of following opinion. All govern-
ments, even despotic, it has been acutely observed by Hume,
rest upon opinion, and they only differ in the number or class of
persons who form this opinion. In a military despotism it may
be the soldiery ; in feudal times it might be the armed barons ;
Thiers History of the Consulate and Empire. ] 1 7
in rude and ignorant communities it is those who monopolize the
intelligence and wealth of the society ; in civilized countries it
is that larger proportion of the people who can bring their joint
strength to act in concert when occasion requires. But in every
society, there is a prevailing public opinion, generated from the
juxtaposition of minds, just as heat is generated from the con-
gregation of animal bodies. A government will be strong and
stable in proportion as it consults, attends to, identifies itself
with this public opinion : it must defer to it entirely, but without
seeming to follow it. It will not answer to resist it, at first,
and then to give way in the end ; nor even to wait in passive
neutrality till it has intelligibly expressed itself, and explicitly
demanded a certain line of action. The statesman's art lies in
anticipating, and yet not diverging from, the line of progress of
the public mind, in gently sounding it, in watching and waiting
for the breeze, and trimming his sails to it, while yet in the
distant horizon, before a breath has yet really reached him. All
statesmen, who have succeeded at all, have in some degree acted
on this rule ; few or none with that entire consistency and
clearsightedness which distinguished young General Bonaparte
during the triumphant opening scenes of the Consulate. The
error of ordinary statesmen is, that they do not apply this rule
universally ; that they make reserves of some questions on which
they presume to entertain opinions of their own, and to wish
to carry these into effect, under cover of their general ' popular
measures ;' they wish to strike a balance, as it were, between the
government and the country, and to contravene opinion in some
instances, because they yield so much besides to it. Or again,
they wish to set limits to their inconsistency ; and a minister
cannot in decency change so rapidly as the phantom public, or
cannot embrace, at one and the same time, such opposite extremes.
Or lastly, in the most supple there may be some remains of
conscience and conviction; so rarely is it that political infi-
delity, any more than religious, can be complete and total.
But let the man arise who, to superior and tried ability, joins
perfect freedom from the shackles of prejudice, entire emanci-
pation of his intellect from the scholastic cobwebs of abstract
truths ; who thinks no measures of any value, but such as can
be c carried,' none hurtful or iniquitous, that are ( called for ; '
let him be gifted with that nice political tact that anticipates the
will of a community before that will has found its own expres-
sion elsewhere, and ripened into a demand which there would be
no merit in granting ; and let him have the discrimination to
distinguish the fictitious and ephemeral cry of a noisy party,
from the genuine deep-seated wishes of the people such a
minister may be, not, perhaps, an absolute autocrat, but may
1 18 Thiers History of the Consulate and Empire.
enjoy the highest measure of power and success that can be
extracted from the shifting and unstable materials of human
affairs. Complete success in statesmanship is only for the
unprincipled ; for him, at least, who bows to no other principle
than the necessity of success.
This brings us to mention another element of Napoleon's
greatness, one which, however rare, seems indispensable to chief
felicities. This is, a fortunate beginning, that the racer have a
good start. There is a greatness which is achieved by perse-
vering and magnanimous resistance to misfortune, which is the
crowning reward of years of struggle against adverse circum-
stances. Against such men we may fancy fortune exerting all
her spite and rage, and yielding in the end to their indomitable
energy. But there are others whom she seems to take a pleasure
in launching forth upon the world with every favourable circum-
stance that it is possible to bestow. They seem to bear a charm
with them, which commands the smiles and favours of all. They
meet no opposition but such as tends to exercise and display
their powers. They have the crest of the wave, and float on
upon it, free from the tossings and undulations beneath them.
Louis the XlVth's first ten years were a striking instance.
Everything he did, he did well, and succeeded. This tide of
fortune must not bear the appearance of fatality, or its magic
is gone. It is the prestige of success, to which it is essential
that it be thought to be earned by the merit of the hero. It
was the more striking in the instance of the First Consul, as it
was a reaction from what had immediately preceded. The
Directory seemed fated to fail in everything they put their hand
to. The change is thus described by M. Thiers :
' In public evils there are always a real evil and an imaginary evil,
the one contributing to render the other insupportable. It is a great
point gained to do away with the imaginary evil, for you diminish the
sense of the real evil, and inspire him who has to endure it with the
patience to await the cure. Under the Directory, people had made up
their minds not to expect anything from a weak disrespected govern-
ment ; which, in order to repress faction, proceeded to violence, with-
out obtaining any of the effects of strength. Everything that it did
was taken in bad part; people would not expect from it any good,
neither would they even believe it when, by accident, it accomplished
some little.
' The accession of General Bonaparte, of whom the public was already
in the habit of expecting everything in point of success, had changed
this disposition. The evil that had afflicted the imagination was cured ;
people had again confidence ; they took everything in good part. His
acts were certainly good in themselves ; it was good to release the
Vendean hostages, to liberate the priests, to manifest pacific dispositions
Tillers' History of the Consulate and Empire. 119
to Europe ; but, above all, the public was disposed to consider them as
such. Such is the spell of confidence ! it is everything for a govern-
ment at its outset, and for that of the Consul's it was immense. Money
flowed into the treasury, from the treasury to the armies, which, content
with these first supplies, awaited with fortitude those which were
promised. Overawed by a power reputed superior to all resistance,
the parties submitted : the oppressing parties, without claiming a right
to oppress any more ; the oppressed parties with the confidence that
they should be no more oppressed.' Vol. i. p. 40.
The fall of Napoleon illustrates these remarks. He deserted,
in process of time, from his original track ; he ceased to be
merely the minister of the will of the French nation; the
empire, and the erection of a dynasty, were notions, principles,
of his own, in which he was not followed by the sense of the
people. He gained victories after this, but he no longer carried
the enthusiasm of a nation along with him ; it was one continued
loss of popularity from the assumption of the empire till the
overthrow, which was effected not more by Russian bayonets
than by internal disaffection; for there was more than one
period of the campaign of 1813 14, when a rising of the
country, or even a vigorous demonstration of the towns in his
favour, might have prevailed in the irresolute councils of the
Allies to enforce a retreat.
To the consideration of Napoleon's fall the present volumes
do not call us, and we return to what led us into these remarks,
the difficulty of reconciling M. Thiers" present enthusiasm for
Napoleon, with his splendid apology for the Constituent and the
Convention in 1825. We shall, indeed, be curious to see how,
in the sequel of his task, he will handle the oppressive despotism
of the ten years of the empire. If he condemns it, or even
laments it as a blunder, he will sadly mar the tone of his
picture, which resembles the suite of rooms at Versailles, devoted
to the history of that period, a set of tableaux illustrating the
glories of Napoleon. And yet we cannot imagine on what
ground a man who wishes to be a consistent advocate of any
degree of constitutional freedom, can admire that despotism.
At the same time so distinct is the policy of the First Consul
from that of the Emperor, that an advocate of the Revolution
may, without inconsistency, approve the one, and condemn the
other. The First Consul only suspended the institutions of the
Revolution for the purpose of restoring order and strength ; the
Emperor trampled upon, and overthrew them. But we are well
aware that this is a distinction which would not suit M. Thiers'
purpose. It is not the peculiar policy of the Consulate which
it is his object to recommend, but the military and aggressive
spirit of the empire. He constitutes himself the panegyrist of
20 Lord Malmesbury's Journal.
Letter from Mr. Canning to Mr. Ellis. 1
1 Downing Street, 13th July, 1797, or rather 14th, 2 A.M.
1 MY DEAR GEORGE, As usual I have kept you for the last, meaning
to write you a very long letter, and to say to you whatever I had left
unsaid to other people, and to say over again to you whatever I had
said to them ; and now I am so tired and exhausted that it is a wonder
to me how much of these fine purposes I shall execute.
' I must tell you, because I have yet told nobody, not even " the
Lion" 2 himself, how much his despatch of yesterday is admired and
approved, as well as the conduct which it describes. Nothing could be
more able and judicious, the three points in Monday's conference
would have staggered the most practised combatant. But " the Lion"
seems to have received them all without flinching, and to have put them
by as quietly as you see they have been put by in the despatch of to-
day, where there is not a word said about them.
' With regard to the title of King of France, I am inclined to agree
with you, that if it is to be reasoned upon seriously we shall be beaten
in the argument, and had best look out for the most fanciful and
innocent renunciation. The chance in our favour is, I think, that this
frivolous question may ultimately be overwhelmed in the greater con-
siderations of the projet, and the commentary upon it, and that if a
treaty is agreed upon, or nearly so, within a short space of time, you
may, in the ardour of consummation, overleap all matters of form, and
then tack on your old apologetical article at the end without much
notice being taken. After all it is a grating thing God knows, I feel
it so ; and which of us that is, of " the Lion," you, and me, we might
add Windham, but he is beyond us, we might add Jenksburg, 3 I
believe, and all told which of us is there that does not feel it grating,
to have to continue modes of concession, instead of enforcing the justice
of demands'? And were I writing to you on the 13th of last December
instead of the present 13th of July, could I have thought with patience
of renunciation and restitution, unaccompanied by cessions to balance
and compensate them 1 But we cannot and must not disguise our
situation from ourselves. If peace is to be had, we must have it;
I firmly believe we must, and it is a belief which strengthens every day.
When Windham says we must not, I ask him, " Can we have war ?" It
is out of the question, we have not the means we have not, what is of
all means the most essential, the mind. If we are not at peace, we shall
be at nothing. It will be a rixa between us and our enemy, of pulsation
on their side, and vapulation on ours. For my part, I adjourn my
objects of honour and happiness for this country beyond the grave of
our military and political consequence which you are now digging at
Lisle. I believe in our resurrection, and find my only comfort in it.
1 Mr. Ellis continued to be attached to Lord Malmesbury's embassy.
3 ' The Lion' was a nickname by which his intimate friends called Lord
Malmesbury, since some foreign newspaper had described him as resembling * un
lion blanc,' from his fine eyes and his profusion of white hair.
3 A nickname for Jenkinson, afterwards Lord Liverpool, and Prime Minister.
Lord Malmesburfs Journal. 21
c But though I preach peace thus violently, do not imagine that I am
ready to take any that you may offer. I think it clear, from the con-
ferences that have yet passed, and from so much of the instructions of
the French plenipotentiaries as has yet been made known to you, that
there is no objection on their part to our stripping their allies, provided
we do it with decency and moderation j and one of the characteristics
is, that so as they get something, they care not much from whom.
Give us, then, something to show as an acquisition but remember
(this is all that I intended by my shabby declamation two pages ago,)
that what may be very splendid as an acquisition, would be very in-
sufficient as a cause of quarrel. We can break off upon nothing but
what will rouse us from sleep and stupidity into a new life and action
what "will create a soul under the ribs of death!" for we are now
soulless and spiritless; and what would do this, except the defence of
Portugal, (I believe that would,) or the preservation of our integrity,
(our entireness, I would say,) I know not. All beyond this we shall
like to have, but we never shall fight for it. I am persuaded, however,
that we may yet have a good deal without fighting.
' I ought now to tell you something of what has been passing here
since you left us. There is but one event, but that is an event for the
world, Burke is dead ! ! How and when the newspapers will tell you.
I know the details only from them. Mrs. Crewe, who was at Beacons-
field at the time, wrote only to say that she could not write to me ; for
he had among all his great qualities that for which the world did not
give him sufficient credit of creating in those about him very strong
attachments and affection, as well as the unbounded admiration which
I, every day, am more and more convinced was his due. It is of a
piece with the peddling sense of these days, that it should be determined
to be imprudent for the House of Commons to vote him a monument.
He is the man that will mark this age, marked as it is in itself, by
events, to all time.
' But it grows very late, and I very tired my hand, at least, though
I have yet much to say, having in truth said nothing. Now for a few
questions, and I have done.
'How is "the Lion's" health?
'What is your private life and conversation at Lisle? for I have
heard nothing of it from nobody.
' Why does not Morpeth write, as well as the rest of you, in the
despatches ? Is he idle 1 or is " the Lion" delicate ? or is it chance 1
or does he do something else for you that does not appear 1
'And now good night, dear George, and God bless you. Ever
yours, G. C.' Vol. iii. p. 399.
We may now proceed to the fourth volume, in which is con-
tained a copious Diary, in which Lord Malmesbury, now an
established political quidnunc, puts down whatever gossip came
to his ears during the first few years of the present century.
1 Burke died July 8th, aged sixty- eight.
22 Lord Malmesburifs Journal.
We think the experiment is far from successful, if it be designed
to conduct to an accurate knowledge of past history; for the news
of the day were so transitory, and the judgments passed upon
them so uncertain and contradictory, that no page hardly of
this Diary can be read by which the adjoining pages are not
contradicted. We are led to prefer a narrative which has been
formed on a general view of the event, to this series of contra-
dictory conjectures. A well-known line describes the difficulty
of making way through an encumbered country,
IIoAAa cT a vavra, Karavra, Trdpavrd re, SoxM* T* r|A0ov.
One day Lord Malmesbury lauds Pitt to the skies ; the next
he is accused of meanness and party spirit ; now Addington is
supposed to be dealing fairly, next day his whole policy is sneak-
ing and surreptitious. The other statesmen introduced are not
much more fairly dealt with ; their actions are not always stated
rightjy^ and the notes of the Editor do not always set right
what is erroneous. On the whole, however, we are impressed
by the conviction that though Lord Malmesbury had learnt to
estimate Pitt's talents better than when he went, sixteen years
before, to the Hague, and though a strong personal regard had
taken place of that dislike which was then excited by his
reserved manner, yet that he was still far from appreciating the
integrity of this high-souled man, and gave him credit for a
wish to return to office in a somewhat underhand manner, of
which Mr. Pitt was altogether incapable. This seems at the
bottom of a most preposterous plot which was laid between
Lord Malmesbury and Canning, (with the aid, we are told, of
Lord Carlisle and Lord Granville Leveson, afterwards Lord
Granville,) by which Addington was to be induced to resign by
receiving an anonymous letter 'leaving his imagination to
* suppose signatures were more numerous and more tremendous
( than those you are sure of.' Vol. iv. p. 104.
We will give one or two specimens of the political gossip of
the day :
' Saturday, March 7, 1801. 10 P.M.
* From Pitt's letter, and from other circumstances and rumours, I
now am confirmed in my ideas that Pitt wishes to remain at the head of
administration ; and that if he does, he will remain with less power, but
with better and more sane judgment ; and the acquiring the last, will,
in my mind, amply balance the decrease of the first. He has discovered
himself, from what has past, to have an overweening ambition, great
and opinionative presumption, and perhaps not quite correct constitu-
tional ideas with regard to the respect and attention due to the Crown.
Possibly this is neither in his real character, nor even his real sentiments,
but caused by listening to bad and silly advisers, and, above all, to an
Lord Malmesbury's Journal* 23
uninterrupted course of political prosperity (as far as related to his per-,
sonal administration), without a single check of adversity for nineteen
years. But whatever may be the cause, he has lost much of his popu-
larity, and of the public good opinion, from his conduct at this period j
and if he retains office, he will find his followers much diminished, and
by no means so inclined to vote implicitly with him as before.' Vol. iv.
p. 33.
All this is overturned in a letter from Canning, October 20,
1802. He says
' That Mr. Pitt told him that he went out not on the Catholic
Question simply as a measure on which he was opposed, but from the
manner in which he had been opposed, and to which, if he had assented,
he would, as a minister, have been on a footing totally different from
what he had ever before been in the Cabinet, This obliged him to
resign ; but as his sincere wish was, that his going out should neither
distress the King nor the country, he had required no one to follow
him. Those who did, did it voluntarily, regardless of his desire ! .... It
had been his anxious hope and endeavour to leave behind him such a
ministry as would be most agreeable to his Majesty ; who, in all great
national points, would act as he had acted. It was to forward this, his
favourite purpose, that he had pledged himself, but himself simply, to
advise and support the present ministry,'
Then follow the notes of a personal conference.
' CANNING. " Is not then the time arrived when you, Pitt, are called
upon by the strongest and most paramount of all duties to come forward
and resume your position?" PITT. "I do not affect to deny it ; I
will not affect a childish modesty j but recollect what I have just said,
I stand pledged : I make no scruple of owning that I am ambitious ;
but my ambition is character, not office." .... CANNING. " I repeat,
is it not your duty, after the sentiments which you have avowed, and
the danger you admit the country to be in, to require this release from
him (Addington) T' PITT. "I cannot bring myself to do it. It is
impossible to prevent its wearing the appearance of caballing and in-
triguing for power. I may be overfeeling about character" ' Vol. iv,
pp. 75, 78.
Somewhat later we hear of the attempt made bv Lord Melville
to induce Mr. Pitt to engage as Addington's equal in the ministry;
a story told with little variation in the Life of Wilberforce.
' Lord Melville came charged with a proposal from Addington for Pitt
to resume office Pitt and Addington to be the two Secretaries of State ;
Pitt to have the nomination to one Cabinet, and one Privy Councillor's
office ; an indifferent person to be First Lord of the Treasury. (It is
thought Adddington had Lord Chatham in view for this, and had fixed
particularly on him to embarrass Pitt). Lord Melville himself (pro-
bably) First Lord of the Admiralty.
' Pitt rejected this offer the moment it was made him : said, so far
24 Lord Malmesburtfs Journal
from even listening to any plan in which the person who was to he the
teal and effective first minister was to be disguised or concealed, he
thought it indispensable that it should at all times, and in every admi-
nistration, be evident and manifest who this person was ; and that he
never would take ' part in any arrangement where this did not clearly
appear. That this alone would have induced him to set aside the pro-
posal he heard, but that it was inadmissible in every part, and not worth
discussion. " VoL iv. p. 177,
Wilberforce, speaking from Pitt's own account of the inter-
viewj as it appears, which Lord Malmesbury did not, adds,
( Dundas saw it would not do, and stopped abruptly. " Really,"
( said Pitt, with a sly severity, and it was almost the only sharp
' thing I ever heard him say of any friend, " I had not the
* curiosity to ask what I was to be." ' Wilberforce^ s Life, vol. iii.
p. 219.
'Lord Pelham acceded to all I said, promised to mention it to
Addington ; but added, that whenever any one talked to him on sub-
jects he did not understand, or was not used to, he always got rid of the
subject, by telling some bon mot or dull joke of Halsell's, when he was
Speaker.' Vol. iv. p. 197.
Alas, for human reputation, that poor HatseWs jokes should
not only be voted dull, but that his Precedents should not suffice
even to make his name known to the new race of statesmen !
Lord Malmesbury's early knowledge of Spain, from his official
residence there, enabled him to detect some mistakes in our mode
of supporting that country during its struggle with Napoleon.
' The character of the Spaniard is to let everything be done for him,
if he finds any disposed to do it, and never to act till obliged to do so.
This has appeared, and will appear in every event of the contest with
France. Not foreseeing this, and placing an implicit confidence in the
first two deputies who arrived from Gijon (in Asturias), we have, by
wishing to do too much, injured the cause. I at once saw what they were.
Materasa (a Viscount), a young, raw Asturian Hidalgo, and Don Diego
de Vega, an Asturian attorney, both, I dare say, well-meaning and
well-thinking, but of no consequence. In fact, Asturias is a province
that is of as little consequence with reference to the kingdom of Spain,
as Glamorganshire is to England.' Vol. iv. 407.
We cannot give the noble editor equal credit for seeing at
once' the purport of another passage of his grandfather's journal,
in which Spain is mentioned.
' That Spain was completely subservient to France, and that Buona-
parte should think the Spanish, by going to war with us, would be
more useful for his purposes than the tribute he now received. This
would happen.' Vol. iv. p. 312.
We venture to amend, without professing that we have the
Lord Malmesbury* s Journal. 25
sanction of any other codex than that which we suppose is in
the present Lord Malmesbury's bureau :
* That Spain was completely subservient to France ; and that if
Buonaparte should think the Spanish, by going to war with us, would
be more useful for his purposes than the tribute he now received, this
would happen.'
Lord Malmesbury wrote sense always sometimes English.
We will close with one further observation, that these jour-
nals show the wisdom of those attempts at peace which were
frequently made during the earlier part of the revolutionary war,
and which issued in the short peace of 1801. These conciliatory
measures were commenced by Pitt in 1795, in the very autumn
after he had opposed the motion of Wilberforce for a negotiation
with France. They lasted, with various intermissions, till the
Peace of Amiens. Neither from them indeed, nor from the
Peace of Amiens, was any solid or lasting quiet to be expected.
But they proved to the nation at large the nature of the struggle
in which we were engaged. They showed the real objects of the
enemy the internecine nature of his assaults and that our only
safety was in victory. This it was which bound together the whole
people of England as one man. The last years of the war there-
fore were eminently popular. And when it pleased God to set
a hero at the head of our armies, by whom the patriotism of our
statesmen and the valour of our soldiers were duly improved,
then it was that those great events succeeded one another in
rapid career, which made the last war so glorious to England,
and so imperishable a portion of the history of the world.
26
ART. II. English Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
London: Burns. 1845. Pp. 362.
THE 'Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century' appear, in
these Notices, in a shape which particularly suits them, and brings
them out. A more unpretending, solid little book we never
saw ; its plainness, at the same time, bearing the stamp of true
elegance and perfect taste. It reminds us of the manners of a well-
bred person in society, with their rigid exclusion of all officious
display. It presents a great contrast in this respect to the tone
in which modern religious biography has been often conducted.
There is no introduction of set phrases and forms of speech,
such as come in at certain turns in many books of this class, and
which may be anticipated with almost unerring accuracy. There
are no reflections introduced for their own sake no interpola-
tions bearing upon things in general : there is no filling up and
rounding off with extraneous subjects. The writer we detect
a female hand pursues her own even course, and has the cha-
racter she is describing always close to her. She draws it out
with simple effect, and we have the character only before us,
and see nothing of the hand which is drawing it. She maintains
just that quiet and natural tone which is so desirable in this
department, and sets us completely at our ease as to the reality
of what we are reading about. The persons we feel sure were just
the persons that are here described. For any influence that a
book of this class is to have, it is evident how important an im-
pression this is to produce. The mind cannot leave these pages
and think it has been looking on a picture. It has come into
contact with real persons, and seen religion in living practical
form before it. A calm reality pervades the whole book. The
writer sympathizes with her characters ; her own mind uncon-
sciously mingles with them ; and she puts them before us with
the quiet self-possession of a person who is describing tempers
and forms of religion which she understands, and to which she
feels an assimilation,
To any one, then, who may wish to know what the internal
domestic religion of good Church-people in those times was, this
little book will give the information wanted. It presents, within
a small compass, the state of religion in our Church, as the teach-
ino* of the Caroline divines had moulded it. It is a picture of
the domestic, retired, interior Church of England of that day.
It is confined, indeed, to one sex ; and so far is a partial picture.
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 27
But there is quite enough in it to show what the religious
standard of the day was.
There is one reason in particular which makes us glad to see
such a book as this. There is a popular impression respecting
these times, which meets with a strong and somewhat irresistible
answer in it. There is a popular impression that the Church
religion of these times was a formal and secular one, that the
Puritans were the only persons of vital and spiritual religion, and
that Church-people did little more than stand up for a formal
ceremonial, and a stiff liturgical routine. The Church reli-
gion of the Caroline times and the ( high Churchmanship ' of a
later date has been all put together under one head, and the
same charge has served for both. And persons, in thinking of
this period, have before them a compound image of ambitious
prelates and rubrical innovations on the one hand, and balls and
masks, and Cavalier revelling and dissipation, on the other. To
the Church has been assigned the worldliness and pomp of the
age, and to the Puritanical party the religion. Even moderate
and impartial minds are ready to make the concession, and to
allow that, though Charles had the best cause, the opposite side
had the best men. It is, indeed, easy to see how prominent a
feature the gay profligacy of the Cavaliers must be when people
only see that one feature, and see nothing else. The faults in the
Royalist party were of the more open and palpable sort, such as
catch the eye readily. And thus persons go off with an image
of a gay Royalist Court, and a dashing Royalist camp, and
Cavaliers with white feathers and prancing steeds, in their heads,
and think they have got at the state of religion on the Church
side, and fix the Church's standard accordingly.
It must be on some such very superficial view as this that the
idea we are alluding to is formed, for there is literally no reasonable
ground whatever for it. It stands refuted the very first time
that we allow our eye fairly to rest on the plain facts of the
case as respects these times. What are the very first names
that come across us in reading of those times of what do our
most familiar Church names remind us, but of men who lived
lives of unwearying self-denial and aspiring devotion ; men who
watched, fasted, and prayed night and day ? George Herbert
and Nicolas Ferrar, Hammond and Sanderson, Morton, Thorn-
dike, Ken, and many others, may have pursued a line of devotion
with which many cannot sympathize, but that they were men of
an intensely devotional spirit appears to be a simple fact, which
any dissenter even must allow who knows anything about them.
From what quarter do our warmest books of devotion come, our
most searching guides to conscience, the loftiest and most ambi-
tious calls to the life spiritual, but from this ? Men judge from
28 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
the particular stamp of high Churchmanship which the last
century produced, a stamp which had more of the Establishment
than the Church in it, as to the necessary tendencies of high
Church religion itself; and on this a priori view, imagine the
Church form of religion to be necessarily the cold and dry one,
and the dissenting the warm and spiritual one. This is simple
imagination. The matter of fact is quite otherwise. The devo-
tional line of the Church at the time we are speaking of was
most remarkably warm, fervent, ardent ; indeed, to use the com-
mon phrase, most spiritual. The Puritans had their peculiar
style of spirituality the Church also had hers. Look, we say
again, at the books of prayers, and rules of devotion and
charity, which proceeded from the Church minds of that age:
look at the whole view they take of what the Christian life is,
and see if you can accuse it of being over lax and cold, too easy,
and self-indulgent. We hardly think you will. The Church
did not cultivate puritanical indeed, but it nevertheless culti-
vated Catholic, spirituality.
The little book before us takes us out of the noise and bustle of
public scenes, and introduces us into the interior of society, and
into the private life of religious families of that day. When
persons judge of a whole state of things from one or two super-
ficial, noisy, showy, circumstances, they are going at haphazard.
Grant that a Royalist camp did not as what camp in the world
ever did? present an exhibition of strict religion: a Royalist
camp was only one external, accidental concomitant of the Church
cause then. It was only one mixed, fragmentary, evanescent
feature in a whole course of events. The Church and her chil-
dren had their own line, and their own way of going on, before any
Royalist camp was in existence, and were not interfered with by
it. What has the state of religious feeling in the interior of
society, in the common, every-day domestic walks of life, to do
with such a casual, secular exhibition as it ? The sphere of
quiet, ordinary life is, of course, the quarter we should turn to,
to form a judgment of what the Church of that day was. That
is the sphere in which her teaching works, and there it is that
we must look for the fruits of her teaching. There we see her
eiforts, her wishes, her standard reflected. The course of private
life the tone of private society what people do at home, in
their towns and villages give the substantial Church of the day.
Quiet, ordinary life is the substance of the Church. There may
be stirring, bustling scenes going on which history takes more
notice of; but to form our judgment from such, is deliberately
to judge from an accidental excrescence, instead of the body
itself; to go off at a tangent, and overlook, and simply pass by,
the main field of inquiry. We are not saying that the public
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 29
manifestations of the Royalist party, whether in Court or camp,
were at all worse than those of the Puritans, for we think quite
otherwise ; but we do not enter upon this question : we simply
object to either side being judged of from such evidence. Let all
religious sides and all parties stand or fall by what they do upon
their own ground, and let them be judged of from the tone of
their ordinary teaching. Let the Church and the Puritan form
of religion, respectively, be judged of from the religious]characters
that each produces and cherishes within its own bosom, and let
us look simply to the height of the standard that each naturally
aspires and attains to.
These little ' Notices' do an important service in bringing us
back to this point. They bring the question to an issue upon
its own proper basis : they bring us back to the interior of our
Church, and show the solid substratum of religion upon which
she rested, the practical, devotional, high spiritual aims which
she cultivated within her fold, in her ordinary field of influence ;
the internal, individual, Christian life to which she brought her
favoured children. Let us hear no more of Cavaliers that
were very dissipated, and Court ladies that were very worldly
and gay, as if such facts as these settled the question. We are
now upon our proper ground ; we have now the natural sphere
of Church influence, the natural standard of her religion, be-
fore us. Let us see what it was. We are far, indeed, from
supposing that such examples of devotion as we see here are
average ones. Of course they are not. If they had been, they
would not have been recorded. The average tone of a religious
body is always a good way below that of the recorded specimens.
Very good people are never very common ; and it is only a cer-
tain proportion, all the world over, that arrive at anything like
high religion. But such instances show the spirit of the body
that they belong to ; they indicate an aim, a direction, a ten-
dency in the religion of the day. They show what the Church
aimed at producing, the object she had before her, and the form
and mould of her religion.
The religious characters that we here come across are cast in
a particular mould, we say. This is a point which must be
remarked on ; for it strikes one every page that we turn over.
Everybody will see a marked distinction, in tone, feeling, reli-
gious cast of mind, between them and pious dissenters. They
belong evidently to a different school to what the latter do.
Before entering into any comparison of the merits of the two,
this fact is obvious at starting. The two classes are cast in two
respective moulds, and it is as easy to tell a Church saint from a
puritan one, as it would be to tell one species in natural history
from another. The former have their mode of thinking and
30 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
acting, and the latter have theirs ; the one have Catholic spiritu-
ality, the other puritan.
It is very difficult to draw out and express, in positive words,
in what this distinction consists ; so much of it lies in a name-
less, subtle, pervading element which runs into every act, and
comes up everywhere, and makes itself felt, rather than seen.
We are always touching upon it, and feeling a bottom, as it
were, underneath us ; but it does not come up to the surface,
and meet our analytical eye. To describe it, however, vaguely,
and in some of its scattered features, the Church character, we
should say, had more shapeliness, or what is called formality,
more simplicity, more lowliness. Grace is the heavenly de-
velopment of nature. There is much nature in the Church cha-
racter: it is one which a pious pagan would naturally feel
himself drawn to, when he saw it, and would, in his degree,
understand. He would be very much at sea about a Puritan.
A certain kind of formalism goes along with this nature. For-
malism is true nature in our present state. When do we go on
most formally, and are made to do everything in a definite,
absolute way most, but when we are children ? And we are
all of us children in religion. It is thus a great part of the
Catholic ethos to express itself formally, i. e. definitely, in
particular stated acts and duties ; to have times and seasons for
doing everything. It chooses evening, morning, and midday;
or seven times a day some definite number of times for
prayer. It has formal postures, attitudes, signs. It leaves nothing
that it does to chaos and chance ; it shapes all that it does ; and
its inward feelings, workings of mind, yearnings, longings ; its
love, pity, benevolence, come out in express forms, and take cer-
tain definite lines of action. This seems to be the peculiar
tendency of the phrase ' good works,' and to many an obnoxious
one. A Catholic talks boldly and straightforwardly about good
works, with a round preciseness, as if he had a definite image
before his mind which he looked full at : a Puritan, or Evan-
gelical, does not of course positively condemn the expression,
but does not like it at the same time ; he avoids it, and will
allude to the subject under some vaguer phrase if he can.
Feelings of penitence, for example, come out in the shape of
penitential acts. They do not exhaust themselves in an internal
swell and roll of the mind, or evaporate in sensations : they come
into the outer world, and assume a visible and tangible form and
being, and become so many things done. Feelings of benevo-
lence and compassion take the same course. The Church
gives this whole class of feelings, all that brings us into
contact with our poorer neighbours, a particular place and posi-
tion in her ethical system. She makes the poor a definite
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 3 1
department for devotional love and regard, and assigns us our
duties to them with the same deep and serious formalism with
which she does everything else. Catholic devotion sets itself
tasks to do with respect to the poor, and attends particularly to
their bodily wants, to the visible and tangible circumstances of
their condition ; it heals their wounds, relieves their emptiness,
covers and warms them. * Good works,' in the peculiar devo-
tional sense, are largely appropriated by this department of works
of mercy towards the poor. The feeling of compassion comes
out and expresses itself more, when it thus assumes visible shape
and substance : the moral yearning is more satisfied : love is
embodied and consolidated. This is the tendency of Catholic
ethics. We are made up of internal and external, have emotions
and sensations within, and have a visible world without us that
embodies these emotions, and gives them locality and form.
Catholic ethics cause a perpetual efflux out of the inner world
into the outer, and acts upon acts are so many perpetual, succes-
sive births in her system, just as the hidden virtues of the soil
come up and are embodied in the trees and plants which draw
them out. A religious life is thus a kind of ritual. It flows on
like a religious ceremonial, and turns vague feelings and impres-
sions into definite movements, acts, and observances.
But, however we may describe the difference between the
religious tone of Church-people and dissenters, that there is such
a difference is very apparent; and the general character and
point of the difference is pretty clear ; and we see it plainly
enough, though we may not be able exactly to analyze it. The
Church has her own form of the humble, penitential, submissive.
Her sweetness, her charity, her pity, her whole order of feelings,
are peculiarly her own, and bear the ecclesiastical stamp upon
them. She has an idea of goodness before her, which the other
communions do not even aim at. The genius of her ethics is
different from theirs. They rather deliberately avoid her mould ;
they do not see the point and virtue of it : they deliberately
argue against it, and have a positive counter-aim, which they set
up in contrast to it. They think the Church standard of the
religious temper a superstitious one : legal, oppressive, servile,
Jewish. They think her sadly deficient in the freedom which
the new law has introduced. They mistake her good works for
mere formalities, her love for romance, her subjection to authority
for superstition.
The characters before us remarkably illustrate this Church
form of religion that we speak of. We observe that a short
notice of this little book in a latitudinarian journal, speaks of a
6 bland fanaticism' which pervades it. The criticism coming
from a latitudinarian quarter, is not unfair or unexpressive ; and
32 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
with the proviso, that we attach our own meaning to fanaticism,
and separate the real thing they mean from the objectionable
name they give it, we will allow it to stand. There is a good
deal described here, a good deal in the course of life and religious
tone of the subjects of these notices, which must appear 'fana-
ticism' to many eyes. It is not dissenting 'fanaticism,' but
that of a very different school. But it is time we should give a
few extracts from the book, and the reader may apply for him-
self what we have said, as we go along.
Lady Falkland is perhaps one of the most striking characters
drawn. Her extreme contemplativeness, seclusion, melancholy,
tender scrupulousness, refined asceticism, make us almost think
sometimes that we must have dipped, by mistake, into the life of
some Roman Catholic saint; and seem rather the accompani-
ments of the veil and cloister, than to belong to the mistress of
a splendid household, and the mother of a family. Different
minds have very different internal dispositions. Lady Falkland's
melancholy was of that peculiar and dangerous depth which be-
comes a source of actual spiritual temptation ; and a life of most
extraordinary and scrupulous devoutness from her very child-
hood, did not prevent her from falling into the most miserable
thoughts about herself and her condition. She was tempted at
times almost to despair of her salvation. The storms swept over
her, and she recovered, and went on in her quiet, ordinary frame
of mind again. But she had always a tendency to take the over-
melancholy and dejecting view. And her saint-like delicacy of
conscience, strict watchfulness, and perpetual prayer, had not
their reward upon earth in the shape of that perfect serenity and
peace which some minds reap from such a life.
' " That her time might not be misspent, nor her employments tedious
to her, the several hours of the day had variety of employments assigned
to them ; intermixing of prayers, reading, writing, working and walking,
brought a pleasure to each of them in their courses," so that the day
ended too soon for all she had to do, and in her early youth she began
to abridge herself of her sleep, and was often at a book in her closet,
when she was thought to be in bed.
' Whilst she was still very young, she worked a purse to hold her
own alms, and would beg for money from her mother to fill it, as eagerly
emptying it again for the poor who came to her father's house, and who
seldom left it without alms from the young daughter, as well as from
her parents.
'She was at this time constant in her private prayers, and when
strangers occupied her own room, to which she commonly retired, she
would ask the steward for the key of some other room for that purpose,
at her hour of prayer. " How powerful with God the lifting up her pure
hands everywhere, in this her innocent childhood, was, soon appeared.
For while her piety and holiness was in this bud, a violent attempt there
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 33
was made to blast it. About the thirteenth year of her age, there was
a storm of temptation raised in her, and some arguments the tempter
had suggested, to drive her to despair of God's mercy towards her. But
God upheld this young twig against such a storm, which hath torn up
many a fair tree : for after some anguish of spirit, and patience in the
combat, and earnest prayers, God's grace was sufficient for her : and
surely it was not the strength of her hands at this age, but the pureness
of them, which prevailed for her.'
'After this conquest, her soul enjoyed much peace and tranquillity;
she went on most cheerfully in holy duties, tasting much delight and
comfort in them, and her heart was at times so full, that out of the
abundance of it she would say, " Oh, what an incomparable sweetness
there is in the music upon David's harp ! Oh, what heavenly joy
there is in those psalms, and in prayers, and praises to God ! How
amiable are the courts of God's house ! how welcome the days of His
solemn worship !'" Pp. 2, 3.
The death of her husband was a devotional era in her life ; and
from that time she adopted a stricter rule, and considered that
her widowhood consecrated her in an especial way to religion.
1 She then addressed herself to a divine of great eminence for piety
and learning, and from him she took directions for a more strict course
of life in this her widowhood, than she had hitherto pursued. Though
the greatest and most important part of her Christian work, was locked
up close within herself, and some of it carefully concealed for fear of
vain-glory, yet much of it appeared by the effects, and so came abroad
for the good of others.
' Her first and great employment, was to read and understand, and
then to the utmost of her strength to practise our blessed Saviour's
Sermon on the Mount, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St,
Matthew's Gospel ; and having read over a most complete, though
compendious Comment upon that Sermon, she set forthwith upon the
work of practising it, beginning with those virtues to which the Beati-
tudes are annexed.' Pp. 7, 8.
One of the Beatitudes is, ' Blessed are the merciful.'
' As to the poor at home, and strangers at the door, she was very
charitable in feeding the hungry, and refreshing the poor and weak ;
for clothing the naked, she might be sometimes seen going up and down
her house, begging clothes from her servants, which she repaid after-
wards with new, that the poor might not go naked or cold from her
door ; so that she was not only a liberal almoner to the poor, but also
an earnest solicitor for them. When it was objected that many idle and
wicked people were by this course of charity relieved at her house, her
answer was, " I know not their hearts ; and in their outward carriage
and speech, they all appear to me good and virtuous ; and I had rather
relieve five unworthy vagrants, than that one member of Christ should
go empty away."
' And as for harbouring strangers, the many inconveniences apt to
NO. XLIX. N.S. D
34 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
result from it could not deter her from entertaining them, sometimes
for several weeks together.
' She would also send plentiful relief to prisoners, and needy persons
at London and Oxford, with a strict charge that it should not be known
from whence it came ; and it was not till after her death that these
charities came to light.
' Nor was her mercifulness bounded within the limits of friends, but
extended to her enemies ; for when many of them were taken prisoners
by the king's soldiers, she consulted how she might send relief to them ;
and on the objection being made, that such an action would raise
jealousies in some minds of her loyalty to the king, she answered, " No
man will suspect my loyalty, because I relieve these prisoners, but he
would suspect my Christianity, if he should see me relieve a needy Turk
or Jew : however, I had rather be so misunderstood, (if this my secret
alms should be known,) than that any of mine enemies (the worst of
them) should perish for want of it." ' Pp. 8, 9.
The temper of meekness and peaceableness is sometimes
particularly attained by those who have extraordinary natural
irritableness.
' Her greater difficulty was with her affections ; she would often com-
plain that her natural temper inclined her to anger, and being so well
aware of it, she most diligently observed herself, and in a great measure
conquered that froward inclination ; the good measure of meekness in
this respect which she attained to, being the more commendable because
of the many difficulties she met with in the endeavour.
' As for peaceableness, as much as in her lay, she had peace with all
men ; she suffered herself to be defrauded and damaged in her estate,
rather than she would disquiet a debtor by suits at law ; for " peace is
equivalent," she said, " to the sum detained." Whilst she avoided law-
suits herself, she endeavoured also to make peace between her neighbours
by all her art and power. On one occasion, when she thought that a
contention was likely to arise about the choice of a parish officer, she
hired one herself, and so kept all peaceable and quiet.
1 Thus she hungered and thirsted after peace, and after righteousness
too ; as the chased and wearied hart pants for the water brooks, so her
soul seemed to long after righteousness, frequently panting, " Oh why
am I not? oh how shall I be 1 ? oh when shall I be perfect, as my
Heavenly Father is perfect 1"
' And for patient suffering : in the latter part of her life she was
seldom free from some trouble ; spiritual afflictions and sorrow, or bodily
infirmities, of weakness and sickness, or worldly losses in her estate ; one
or more of these, or the like, pressures were constantly heavy upon her ;
yet no impatience, and little disturbance could be perceived in her, but
when all these trials were at once present, her patience triumphed over
them all.
1 Some persons thought her in love with suffering, when she refused
to pay contribution money against the king, and suffered her stock, of
great value, to be seized, rather than to pay some little tax, which was
Ghurchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 35
demanded ; it seemed to such observers, that, not content with carrying
the cross if it was laid upon her, she went to meet it ; but she was
willing to suffer loss rather than blemish her obedience and loyalty, so
that till the king himself granted her an indulgence, she refused to pay
contribution to the neighbouring garrisons, which were against him.'
Pp. 11, 12.
In the midst of these self-mortifications, ' she bewailed her
' weaknesses and spiritual wants ; and when those about her
' wished, as they sometimes did, that they were as forward in
' the ways of religion as they saw her, she would answer, " Oh
6 ye are not so backward ! yet wish yourselves better I ye know
* not how vile and corrupt my heart is." '
Of her hours of private prayer, and the religious services in
her household, we hear
'With equal diligence she practised the duty of prayer enjoined in
the same sermon of our Lord, spending some hours every day in her
private devotions and meditations ; these were called by her family her
busy hours ; Martha's employment was her recreation, Mary's her busi-
ness.
1 Her maids came into her chamber early every morning, and usually
passed an hour with her, when she prayed, catechised, and instructed.
To this were daily added the morning and evening prayers of the
Church, before dinner and supper ; and another form of prayer, together
with reading the scriptures and singing psalms, before bed-time,
' She charged her servants to be present at all these hours of prayer
if their business allowed of it, but never suffered any one to be absent
from all the services ; if she observed any such, she sent for them into
her chamber and prayed with them privately, making it a rule that at
least every morning and evening, every servant in her house should
offer the sacrifice of prayer and praises to God. Nor did she limit the
services of her house to her own household, but opened. iier oratory to
her neighbours as freely as her hospitable hall.
' On the Lord's Day she rose earlier than on other days, but often
found the day too short for her private duties, and instructions of her
children and servants, so that she would sometimes rise on Monday two
or three hours before day-light, to supply what was left undone the day
before.
' In order also to prepare herself for the Sunday's duty beforehand,
she sequestered herself on the Saturday from company and worldly busi-
ness, and seldom came out of her closet till towards evening, when her
chaplain catechised, in addition to the usual service of prayer.
' She punctually observed the other Holy Days of the Church, and
after the public service, she released her servants to their recreations,
and the care of their own concerns, saying, " These days are yours, and
as due to you, as ordinary days to my employments." On these days of
rest, she went with her books to her unlearned neighbours, who were at
leisure to hear her read, whilst their plough and their wheel stood still.
D 2
36 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
' She strictly observed the Fasts of the Church, and such days as
were appointed for solemn humiliation, which her whole family, great
and small, observed after the pattern of the Ninevites. When the
calamities of the country increased, she often wished that lawful autho-
rity would appoint not only the second Friday, but the last Wednesday
in every month, to be kept solemnly throughout the land, that their
fasts might be doubled as well as their troubles.
' She exhorted all her servants to accompany her to the Sacrament,
and those who were prevailed upon, gave in their names two or three
days before, that she might instruct them herself, and obtain the help
of her chaplains to examine them and instruct them further ; for which
purpose, the day before their receiving was free from their ordinary
work. When they had received, she called them together again, and
gave them such exhortations as were proper for them.' Pp. 12 15.
A fresh affliction now came to quicken her, in the death of
( her young and most dear son Lorenzo.'
' She wept and mourned all the day long, and at night also watered
her couch with tears, and weeping she would say, " Ah ! this immoderate
sorrow must be repented of, these tears wept over again !" Her quick
sense of displeasing God by extreme grief soon allayed its vehemence.
She retired into herself to hearken what the Lord would say unto her,
in this louder call of affliction ; and it seemed to be prompted to her
that she was not yet weaned enough from the things of this world, and
it was expedient for her that some of the worldly comforts she most
delighted in should be taken away, that her conversation might be yet
more spiritual and heavenly ; therefore this affliction seemed to call
her to a greater mortification to the world, and a nearer conformity to
Christ her Lord.
' But fearing that her sorrow for her son was still exorbitant, she
went again to ask counsel of her ghostly physician, the same eminent
divine, as it appears, whom she consulted after her husband's death.
She acquainted him with the violence of those fits of sorrow, which of
late had seized upon her for the death of her son, and he, by his good
counsel, with God's help, cured this new distemper of hers, prescribing
antidotes also to prevent a relapse into this malady of excessive grief.
' She returned home, confessing that this very affliction was most fit
for her, and that it should turn to her profit ; and, cheered by this con-
fidence, it was observed by those who saw her on her return, that a
remarkable change had come over her, as great as that which passed
upon Hannah when Eli promised a son in answer to her prayers.
* Thus God made the spiritual medicine she had received effectual,
and the antidote too, for while she lamented the excess of her grief, she
did not again give way to it. She used her newly-regained cheerfulness
in making resolutions of farther progress in holiness, and set about
running the last stages of her Christian race with greater speed than
any former ones. Yet, before she began upon the fulfilment of these
new purposes, she was tried by a fresh temptation ; she feared that her
repentance was not sincere enough to be acceptable to God, and reasoned
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 37
thus with herself, " My grief for my sins has not been so vehement as
that for my son's death ; I wept not so bitterly for them as I did for
that j and therefore my repentance is not acceptable/' ' Pp. 18, 19.
Her son's death she took as another call to an increased strict-
ness, and was another devotional era in her life. ' The vanity
' of apparel she had cut off long before, and after her husband's
death, the richness of it too, and what she spared in this she
bestowed upon the poor members of Christ. She now began to
cut off all other worldly pomp ; she gave up that state which be-
longed to her rank, in her house, in her retinue, and at her table,
and took more delight in seeing her revenues spent among a
crowd of alms-men and women at her door, than by a throng
of servants in her house.' She now commenced a course of
deeper and more inward asceticism, and set herself new tasks,
and entered on new spheres of self-mortification. She set
earnestly to work to extinguish even the most latent tendencies
to selfishness, and she discovered a selfish principle lurking even
under the most beautiful and winning affections of our present
state. What people in general think they have not only a right,
but a positive call of duty, to indulge to the very full those feel-
ings which constitute the very morality and religion of the world
at large, she suspected, and saw a principle of evil lying underneath
them, like a snake in the grass. The sweet, overpowering fasci-
nation of the natural domestic affections was what she par-
ticularly set herself against. She looked upon it as a regular
temptation, and fought inwardly against it. The Church has
all throughout her course expressed especial mistrust of this
class of feelings, and cautioned her members against them.
They look so exceedingly amiable, indeed, that it appears posi-
tively harsh and forbidding to say anything in caution against
them : and it does undoubtedly require a certain real progress
in spiritual life to be able to mistrust them : it is a very testing
point as to persons' religious state of mind. But Catholic
spirituality is very determined on this head, and sticks to its
point. It penetrates through the surface, and sees evil where the
world does not see it. It mortifies nature even in her tenderest,
softest, sweetest part, and drives the knife's point into the full
bud of rich and fragrant life.
( She now severely undertook the mortification of her natural affec-
tion to her children and friends, saying to some of those who were
dearest to her, " Oh, love me not, I pray, too much ! And God grant I
never love my friends too much hereafter ; that hath cost me dear, and
my heart hath smarted sore with grief for it already." She resigned her
will and understanding, as well as her affections, more and more com-
pletely to the will, and to the wisdom of God. " Whatsoever comes
upon me," she said, " I will bear it patiently, because by God's will it
38 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
comes ; yea, I will bear it cheerfully, because by God's wisdom it is thus
ordered, and it will work (as all things else) for mine advantage."
' Therefore she considered the death of her husband, and of her son,
as real benefits to her, and would say, " I should offend not only against
free obedience and submission, but also against common prudence, if I
should wish my condition otherwise than now it is ; I cannot wish any-
thing so gainful and prosperous to me, as this, which my Heavenly
Father in His wisdom hath ordered for me."' P. 21.
*******
' The warning which she gave to young mothers, not to exceed in
fondness for their husbands and children, came suitably and affectingly
from her. " Oh, I have had my portion," said she, " of these very com-
forts, with the first, no one woman more ; but there is no lasting nor
true pleasure in them. There is no real comfort from any espousals
but from those to Christ." ' Pp. 28, 29.
A scheme was much in her thoughts, ' for providing places
' for the education of young gentlewomen, and the retirement of
' widows (as Colleges and the Inns of Court and Chancery are
' for men), in several parts of the kingdom ; she hoped that learn-
' ing and religion might nourish more in her own sex, by their
' having such opportunities to serve the Lord without distraction.
' This project might not have been beyond her reach to accom-
' plish, through the power and interest that she had with the
* great men of her day, but that the evil times disabled her.
* When she found herself unable to fulfil these designs for the
' good of the kingdom, she returned with fresh vigour to the
' care of improving herself.'
The accurate, definite way in which she sets about parts of
her spiritual progress is remarkable.
1 She undertook at the same time the difficult task of taming the
tongue ; and for this purpose refrained for a while from speech almost
entirely, then loosened it a little, with two cautions.
' First, that it should " never speak evil of any man though truly,
but only upon a design of charity, to reclaim him from that evil."
And because a vicious man is seldom reclaimed by anything said
against him in his absence, she gave peremptory charge to her tongue,
that it should never speak evil of any man, however notoriously wicked,
if he was absent and not likely to be amended by it.
' The second caution her tongue received was, that " as much as was
possible, it should keep in every idle word, and speak out only that
which was to edification." So that in the latter part of her life she
seldom spoke but on subjects relating to the concerns of the soul,
seldom even with her friends and neighbours on any worldly matters.
She took the same care in writing as in speaking, and suffered not a
vain nor idle word to slip from her pen . . . .' P. 20.
Her exceeding scrupulousness and strictness extended to
everything, and indeed would have made life too difficult for
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 39
tier, and her trial too harassing, but for the constant unbosoming
of her soul to her spiritual adviser, Duncan, afterwards her
biographer. ' If it be but a mote, may it not grow,' said she,
' to a beam in mine eye ?'
< Greedily aspiring after perfection, she feared the smallest errors ; and
if any of her scruples proceeded from her own carnal reason, or from
Satan, to disquiet her, yet even that poison she turned into honey, taking
occasion from those very scruples to be more exact afterwards in her life.
' " One while I fear, I indulge too much liberty to others, and too
little to myself; another while, that I am too strict to others, and too
remiss to myself; and therefore I mete not to others, as I mete
to myself. I multiply queries against myself, whether this duty
was well performed, or not ; this action lawful, or not ; that word or
silence, seasonable or not ; and for commerce and traffic with my neigh-
bours, whether this and that bargain were just, not prejudicing myself,
nor over-reaching them. And when I would give thanks for anything
well done, (through God's grace in me,) I think it might have been
better done, and that therefore my thanksgiving may be deferred."
1 " Now, Sir, if these motions be from the Spirit of God in me, I must
hearken what the Lord God saith to my soul ; at my utmost peril it is,
if I receive not, and cherish not those motions : and if they be doubts I
raise of myself, they are not to be neglected, there is danger (my books
tell me) in that ; but if they be scruples, heeding them is dangerous :
so there is danger on every side." ' Pp. 31, 32.
Her meekness now increased ' till she was clothed with it as a
' robe, covering her with the beauty of a meek and quiet spirit.
' Her compassions, deep as they were before, grew more and
( more tender, bringing tears to her eyes when she saw or heard
* of distress, and opening her hand wide for the comfort of the
( poor and needy. Where her hand of charity could not reach,
c her feelings of compassion found their way ; and those who sat
' with her at meals, saw the earnestness of her sorrow, when the
' miseries of the Church and kingdom were the subject of con-
f versation. She was almost pined with hunger, and faint with
' thirst after righteousness ; ever and anon sighing, " Oh, that I
' could attain unto it ! Oh, that my ways were made so direct !"
* It was usual with her at night to compose herself to sleep, saying
' to her woman, not without some joy, " Well, now I am one
( day nearer my journey's end ;" comforting herself, that when
( her body should sleep in the bed of her grave, then the days
' of sin would be finished, and then she should be perfect, as her
' heavenly Father is perfect.'
' Her humility in begging forgiveness from others was most singular ;
during the latter part of her life, she seldom slept till she had asked
forgiveness, as well as blessing, from her mother, that if she had in any
way offended her, she might be sure of her pardon.
40 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
' But that which more astonished the inmates of her house, was to see
this noble lady begging forgiveness from her inferiors and servants, for
her angry words or chiding frowns towards them; and sometimes
asking their pardon when she had expressed no anger outwardly,
because, said she, "somewhat I felt within myself, too like anger
towards you, though I suppressed it as soon as I could." ' P. 24.
As her end approached, a wish to withdraw altogether from
the world, and live in religious retirement, became very strong
in her. ( She had resolved to get loose from the multitude of
( her worldly employments, and to remove from her stately
' mansion to a little house near adjoining ; and in that house
' and garden, with a book, and a wheel, and a maid or two, to
' withdraw herself from worldly business and unnecessary visits;
* and she took as great delight in planning this humiliation and
* privacy, as others do in advancement to honours and employ-
' ments.' Her death-bed was wonderfully calm and composed,
and seemed to come, as a recompense at last for all her long
sufferings, bodily and mental, as a perfect harbour and rest.
1 After a while, they who were about her, fearing the pangs of death
to be upon her, began to weep and lament ; the whole company grew
sad and heavy ; she only continued in her former condition, not at all
sorrowful, nor affrighted by these messengers of death. Then the
physician coming, and Upon consideration saying, " Here is no sign of
death, nor of much danger; by God's help she may recover again;"
the whole company was very much comforted and cheered. She only
remained in her former indifferency ; no alteration at all could be
perceived in her, as if she had been the only party in the chamber
unconcerned in it ; neither fear of death could grieve nor trouble her,
nor hopes of life and health rejoice her; "I have wholly resigned up
myself to God," said she, " and not mine, but His will be done, whether
in life or death."
' Thus she was brought from Oxford, home, and now being far spent,
and near her end, she could speak little, yet expressed a great deal of
thankfulness to God, who had brought her safe, to die in her own
house, among her dearest friends.
' But the tranquillity of mind, which she had in these her last days,
was most observable ; that the devil, who had so often perplexed her
with violent temptations, should now leave her to rest and ease : she
was wont to fear his most violent assaults on her deathbed, as his
practice commonly is, but now God, it seems, had chained him up, and
enabled her, by His grace, to tread Satan under her feet : and this
tranquillity of mind, more clearly now appearing at her death, than
ordinarily in the time of her health, is a great evidence to me, of God's
most tender mercy and love towards her, and of some good assurance,
in her, of her salvation.
' This quiet gave her leave, though now very faint and weak, to be
most vigorous and most instant at prayers ; she calls for other help,
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 41
'very faintly ; but for prayers, most heartily and often (in those few
hours she lived at home :) and after the office of the morning was
performed, she gave strict charge, that every one of her family, who
could be spared from her, should go to church and pray for her ; and
then in a word of exhortation to them who stayed by her, saying,
" Fear God, fear God," she most sweetly spent her last breath ; and so
most comfortably yielded up her spirit to Him who made it : and was,
we doubt not, admitted into heaven, into the number of the Apostles
and Saints of God, (on St. Matthias-day,) there to reign in the glory of
God for evermore.
1 In which moment of her death, there seemed as little outward pain,
as inward conflict ; none could perceive either twitch, or groan, or gasp,
or sigh, only her spirit failed ; and so she vanished from us, as if God
had intended her here some foretaste, not only of the rest of the soul,
but also of the ease of the body, which she should enjoy hereafter in
heaven.' Pp. 3537.
From Lady Falkland we turn to a very different person, one
who stands, indeed, in considerable contrast with all the other
characters in the book, Anne Clifford, the famous Countess of
Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery. Her exceeding vigour
and spirit, decision, loftiness, power of mind, talent for business,
and the like, combine most strikingly with a religion of stern
humility, and self-denial. ( She was absolute mistress of herself,
her resolutions, actions, and time,' says her funeral-biographer.
Her immense estates and numerous castles required a manage-
ment almost as difficult and irksome as that of a small kingdom.
She enters upon this department of labour in a kind of romantic
spirit of gratitude to her ancestors, and wish to restore the
monuments of their greatness. ' Six ancient castles, ample and
' magnificent, which her noble ancestors had built, and some-
* time held up with great honour to themselves, and security to
' their sovereigns, and hospitality to their friends and strangers,
* now by the rage of war, or time, or accidents, pulled or fallen
' down, or made uninhabitable scarce one of these six that
( showed more than the skeleton of a house her reviving spirit
' made these scattered stones come together, those ruins forsake
' their rubbish, and lift up their heads to their former height . . .
* Her friends advised her not to be so profuse in building, as they
' were well assured that, as soon as she had built her castles, Crom-
* well would order them to be destroyed, but she answered, " Let
' him destroy them if he will : but he shall surely find that as
' often as he destroys them, I will rebuild them, while he leaves
( me a shilling in my pocket." ' Her household arrangements,
manorial administration, and the whole business of her ample
domain, go on upon regular, inflexible, effective system ; and
order reigns with an imperious absoluteness over the whole
42 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
field which she embraces. She was inflexibly regular in her
residence; though ' her journeys' to her different castles f were
* often made in the winter, and over rough and untrodden
( mountain ways, when she assembled the labourers to act as
( pioneers, and rewarded them liberally for their work.'
* About three years before her death, she had appointed to move
from Appleby to Brougham Castle, in January. The day being very
cold, a frost and misty, yet much company coming (as they usually did)
to attend her removal : she would needs hold her resolution, and in her
passage out of her house she diverted into the chapel, (as at such times
she commonly did), and there, at or near a window, sent up her private
prayers and ejaculations, when immediately she fell into a swoon, and
could not be recovered until she had been laid for some time upon a
bed, near a great fire. The gentlemen and neighbours who came to
attend her, used much persuasion that she would return to her chamber,
and not travel on so sharp and cold a day ; but she having before fixed
on that day, and so much company being come purposely to wait on
her, she would go ; and although as soon as she came tojier horse-litter,
she swooned again, and was carried into a chamber as before, yet as
soon as that fit was over, she went ; and was no sooner come to her
journey's end, (nine miles,) but a swooning seized on her again ; from
which being soon recovered, when some of her servants and others
represented to her, with repining, her undertaking such a journey, fore-
told by divers to be so extremely hazardous to her life, she replied, " She
knew she must die, and it was the same thing to her to die in her litter
as in her bed."' Pp. 253, 254.
The story of the ( boon hen ' shows, in an amusing way, the
determination, mixed with good nature, which marked her terri-
torial government.
( It was a custom on all her estates for each tenant to pay, besides
his rent, an annual boon hen, as it was called. This had ever been
acknowledged a just claim, and was common long after Lady Pembroke's
time on many great estates in the North, being generally considered as
a steward's perquisite. It happened that a rich clothier from Halifax,
one Murgatroyd, having taken a tenement near Skipton, was called on
by the steward of the Castle for his boon hen. On his refusal to pay it,
the Countess ordered a suit to be commenced against him. After the
suit had lasted long, it was carried in her favour, but at the expense of
200Z. It is said that, after the aifair was decided, she invited Mr.
Murgatroyd to dinner, and drawing the hen to her, which was served
up as the first dish, she said, " Come, Mr. Murgatroyd, let us now be
good friends : since you allow the hen to be dressed at my table, we'll
divide it between us." ' Pp. 249, 250.
Her reading, information, and powers of conversation, exhibit
another department of her mind. ( " She had early," says Bishop
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 43
' Rainbow, " gained a knowledge, as of the best things, so an
c ability to discourse in all commendable arts and sciences, as
' well as in those things which belong to persons of her birth
' and sex to know. For she could discourse with virtuosos,
' travellers, scholars, merchants, divines, statesmen, and with
' good housewives in any kind, insomuch that Dr. Donne is
' reported to have said of this lady in her younger years, that
' she knew well how to discourse of all things, from predestina-
' tion to slea-silk." '
A self-denial and stern ascetic feeling appear in the coarse
dress of black serge which alone distinguished the mistress of so
many castles and the Queen of the North, from ordinary women ;
and the text, ' I keep under my body, and bring it into subjec-
tion,' is applied to her by her biographer, as the most charac-
teristic one he could think of for her. She knew how to deny
herself. He says :
' " Whilst treating her neighbours and dependents with generosity,
she was sparing, even to frugality, in her personal expenses. She was
simple and abstemious in her food, and accustomed "pleasantly to
boast that she had never tasted wine or physic. 1 ' '
He adds quaintly,
' " She much neglected, and treated very harshly, one servant, and a
very ancient one, who served her from her cradle, from her birth, very
faithfully, according to her mind, which ill usage, therefore, her menial
servants, as well as her friends and children, much repined at. And
who this servant was I have named before. It was her body, who,
as I said, was a servant most obsequious to her mind, and served
her four-score and six years.
' " The mistress of this family was dieted more sparingly, and I believe
many times more homely, and clad more coarsely and cheaply, than
most of the servants in her house. Her austerity and humility were
seen in nothing more than (if I may allude to Coloss. ii. 23) in ' neglect-
ing of the body, not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.' Whether
it were by long custom, to prove with how little nature may be content,
and that if the appetite can be satisfied, the body may be fed with what
is most common and cheap. She taught us that hunger and health
seek not delicacies nor fulness.
' " that those who think they cannot live except they fare deliciously
every day, would but make trial one year how they may preserve their
own health, and save their poor brethren from starving, (by hunger or
nakedness,) out of those superfluities and surfeits by which they destroy
themselves."' Pp. 245,246.
The luxury and dissipation of Charles the Second's Court
kept her from ever going there.
' After the Restoration, a lady of her neighbourhood conversed with
her upon their mutual joy at the King's return, and the splendour
44 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
which had attended his entrance to Whitehall, and wished that she
could go once more to London, and feed her eyes with the sight of such
happy objects, before she came back to her retirement ; but she answered
suddenly, " If I should go to those places now so full of gallantry and
glory, I ought to do as they do to ill-sighted or unruly horses, have
spectacles (or blinkers) put before mine eyes, lest I should see or censure
what I cannot competently judge of; be offended myself, or give offence
to others." 'P. 251.
But this strictness and severity was entirely without censori-
ousness ; and she accommodated herself to the manners of the
day, when her visitors came to her, saw herself surrounded
by gay dressers, without ever wishing to put her own ' serge"'
on them; and treated with indulgence and good nature the
frivolities from which she felt herself free. ' She never cen-
6 sured others for greater gaiety of apparel, and when visitors
' came to her, after the Restoration, in dresses which other per-
( sons considered affected and fantastical, the Countess only
c indulged in such pleasant reflections as rather gave pleasure
' than uneasiness to her visitors.'
The amiable side of her character shows itself in various
traits ; a deep love for her mother remaining as a kind of ruling
affection in her throughout life.
{ For her mother's memory she showed a tenderness which is re-
markable in contrast with the sterner features of her character. " She
never spoke of her but in terms of enthusiastic veneration, and usually
with the epithet ' my blessed mother.' " Whilst enumerating in her
memoirs the mercies which had been vouchsafed to her, she wrote
thus :
' " I must not forget to acknowledge, that in my infancy and youth, I
have escaped many dangers both by fire and water," &c., " and much
the better by the help of the prayers of my devout mother, who inces-
santly begged of God for my safety and protection." In another place,
after speaking with sufficient confidence of her own conduct during the
difficulties and troubles of her two marriages, she adds, " by a happy
genius I overcame all these troubles, the prayers of my blessed mother
helping me therein."
' In a letter addressed to her by George Herbert, after her second
marriage had connected her with his family, he wrote thus : " A Priest's
blessing, though it be none of the court-style, yet doubtless, Madam, can
do you no hurt. Wherefore the Lord make good the blessing of your
mother upon you, and cause all her wishes, diligence, prayers, and tears,
to bud, blow, and bear fruit in your soul, to His glory, your own good,
and the great joy of,
< " Madam,
' " Your most faithful Servant in Christ Jesu,
' " GEORGE HERBERT.
'"Dec. 10th, 1631. Bemerton."
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 45
1 Her mother died soon after her first marriage, having parted from
her seven weeks before, on the road between Penrith and Appleby; and
when she came in her second widowhood to live in the north, she
raised a pillar, still known in that country by the name of the Countess'
Pillar. It is decorated with her arms, a sun-dial for the benefit of
travellers, and the following inscription : " This Pillar was erected in the
year 1656, by Anne, Countess Dowager of Pembroke, &c., for a memorial
of her last parting, in this place, with her good and pious mother,
Margaret, Countess Dowager of Cumberland, on the 2nd of April, 1616.
In memory whereof she hath left an annuity of four pounds to be
distributed to the poor of the parish of Brougham every 2nd day of
April for ever, upon the stone table placed hard by. Laus Deo."'
P. 239 241.
There is something always interesting in the feeling which
brings rich and poor together ; but in such a person as Anne
Clifford it has a peculiar grace, because we know she must
have it in a high form, if she has it at all. There is remarkable
genuineness in everything she does, and we may trust it. When
the Countess of Dorset dines with her poor women at her
Almshouse, and treats them with affectionate familiarity, and
likes to be with them, and to see them about her, it is a sign of
a true religious humbleness of mind, which we cannot well mis-
take. Proud people, indeed, are often observed to have a ten-
dency to consort with their inferiors, and there is no relying on
the act itself as any sign : it entirely depends on who does it. It
is often hypocritically done ; but if Anne Clifford did it at all, she
would do it with heartiness and simplicity. * She took especial
* delight in the Almshouse which she founded near Appleby for
* thirteen poor women, to be called a mother, and twelve sisters, for
( which she provided an endowment, and the Service of the Church
* to be performed daily. With these sisters, as she liked to call
' them, she would sit and dine in their Almshouse, and invite
* them to dine and converse with her as freely as her greatest
( guests. This institution continued for more than twenty-three
* years under her care, she having with her own hands laid the
' foundation of the building, and brought its inhabitants to
' occupy their several rooms. She was not satisfied with her
' children and grandchildren when they came to visit her, if
' they did not pay their salutations at her Almshouse, and she
* commonly admonished them when they came from far to pay
* their duty to her, that before they came to her for a blessing,
( they should take the blessing of the poor, the Almswomen's
' blessing by the way.'
She was the same with her own household servants.
' " She looked on some (and possibly on some of the meaner sort
of her trusty servants, whose offices might occasion them nearer
46 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
attendance) to be such as Seneca allows them to be, good servants
and humble friends .... This heroic lady would (besides the neces-
sary discourses with them about her affairs) divert herself by familiar
conversations with her servants, in which they were sure (besides
other gains from her bountiful hands) to gain from the words of
her mouth something of remark, whether pleasant or profitable, yet
very memorable for some or other occasion of life. So well did she
observe the wise man's caution, Eccles. iv. 30, Be not a lion in thine
house ; intimating that some are always in rage, and brawl and fright
their family from their presence; her pleasantry and affability made
their addresses a great part of their preferment.
' " I should now have done with that part of economy which respects
her servants, but that she had another way of building, as to them ;
namely, building them up in the most holy faith, and also giving them
their meat in due season, that meat which our Saviour told his followers
would not perish, but endure to everlasting life," ' Pp. 243, 244.
On her deathbed her real humility of character comes out
very strikingly. She expostulates with her servants for caring
so much for her, and being ( so passionately concerned about
her' about one who was f unworthy of their attention.'
1 " She had brought into subjection all great thoughts, she had cast
down imaginations and every high thing, bringing into captivity every
high thought, and submitting the world and her soul to the obedience of
Christ ; her passions were mortified and dead before her : so that for
three or four days of her last sickness (for she endured no more) she lay
as if she endured nothing. She called for her Psalms, which she could
not now, as she usually had done, read herself, (the greatest symptom of
her extremity,) and caused them to be read unto her. But that cordial
(in which she had always taken particular delight) kept in Rom. viii.,
and in her heart ; this her memory held to the last, this she soon
repeated : no doubt to secure her soul against all fear of condemnation,
being now wholly Christ's, having served Him in the spirit of her mind,
and not loved to walk after the flesh, having (as often as she affection-
ately pronounced the words of this chapter) called in the testimony of
the Spirit to bear her witness, that she desired to be delivered from this
bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God ;
and so to strengthen her faith and hope by other comfortable arguments,
contained in the rest of that chapter, being the last words of continuance
which this dying lady spoke."
' The rest of the time she lay quiet, as if ruminating, digesting, and
speaking inwardly to her soul what she had uttered in broken words,
and so breathed her last without disturbance, on March 22d, 1675-6, in
the 87th year of her age.' Pp. 255, 256.
Lady Elizabeth Hastings is a person nearer our own times ;
she died in 1739, and the memory of the ( good Lady Betty' is
still kept up in the parts of Yorkshire where she lived. There
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 47
is exceeding grace and dignity about her : a perfect elegance
and polish of mind, which blends most harmoniously with her
devotional life. Her talents and high birth early made her a
well-known person. At the age of twenty-two, the mistress of
a large fortune, and the owner of Ledstone House, she stood out
more prominently before the world than ladies usually do ; which
must account for there being a description of her in the forty-
second number of the ( Tatler,' written in the style of the day,
but not unexpressively.
< " Methinks, I now see her walking in her garden like our first parent,
with unaffected charms, before beauty had spectators, and bearing
celestial conscious virtue in her aspect. Her countenance is the lively
picture of her mind, which is the seat of honour, truth, compassion,
knowledge, and innocence.
' There dwells the scorn of vice and pity too.'
' " In the midst of the most ample fortune and veneration of all that
behold and know her, without the least affectation, she consults retire-
ment, the contemplation of her own being, and that Supreme Power
which bestowed it. Without the learning of schools, or knowledge of a
long course of arguments, she goes on in a steady course of uninterrupted
piety and virtue, and adds to the severity and privacy of the last age
all the freedom and ease of this. The language and mien of a court she
is possessed of in the highest degree ; but the simplicity and humble
thoughts of a cottage are her more welcome entertainments. Aspasia is
a female philosopher, who does not only live up to the resignation of
the most retired lives of the ancient sages, but also to the schemes and
plans which they thought beautiful, though inimitable. This lady is
the most exact economist, without appearing busy ; the most strictly
virtuous, without tasting the praise of it ; and shuns applause with as
much industry, as others do reproach. This character is so particular,
that it will very easily be fixed on her only, by all that know her ; but
I dare say, she will be the last that finds it out."' Pp. 339, 340.
She entered into society, ' but always with a guard upon her-
( self, which restrained her talents for conversation within the
' bounds of religion, charity, and courtesy, and enabled her
* dexterously and pleasantly to introduce religious subjects, in
' which was her real delight. At her table her countenance
f was open and serene; her speech soft and musical ; her language
' polite, and seasoned with salt. In her drawing-room,' we
are told, ( she maintained a visible pre-eminence above the
f highest and finest of her sex ;' and everything said of her tends
to raise a refined and lofty image of her. ' These praises were
' written after her death, for during her lifetime, her biographer
' says, that she could never endure to hear one word in her
* own praise ; " and when all the finest pens in the kingdom
48 Churcliwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
' were invited to display her worth, the design miscarried,
purely by her own opposition." ' A true religious sweetness of
character goes along with these high traits
' If ever by speech, by manner or otherwise, she only suspected that
she had caused disturbance to others, she had no peace with herself
till she had restored their peace, and would often ask forgiveness from
those, even of her inferiors, who did not know what cause she had given
for asking it.' Pp. 348, 349.
' She watched strictly over her own heart to keep it clear of evil mix-
tures, and the taint of self-love, continually purifying her heart by acts
of faith in the Blood of her Redeemer, by rating her own righteousness
at nothing, by marking well, and daily committing to writing all her
little slips, and washing them away with tears of repentance, descending
even to vain imaginations, and such as happened in her sleep ; " and for
the expiation of slips, and things less than they, (besides prostrations, and
other humiliations and austerities)," shedding abundance of tears;
keeping her spirit moreover in a recollected state, and herself in readi-
ness to lie down in death, even in the midst of life and in firm
health.' P. 345.
Her alms and bounties were on an extraordinarily munificent
scale, including, among a vast number of other items, ( exhibi-
tions to scholars in the Universities.' At her death, she left a
manor to Queen's College, Oxford, ( for maintaining and quali-
f fying five poor scholars, to be elected, by lot, from schools in-
' Yorkshire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland.' She took a great
interest in the religious state of things at that University, and
was especially anxious to know about /those young men at
' Oxford, among whom Methodism afterwards took its rise, and
' she hoped for much good from them whilst they avowed only
' sound religion as it is professed by the English Church ; but
' when new doctrines were introduced, and men were alienated
f from their settled Ministers, she was among the foremost to
* remonstrate against them.' Persons were astonished at her
charities, and could not account for them ; but
1 The simplicity of her own wants allowed her to give liberally; " for
they that walk in the spirit as she did, die progressively to every vanity,
and take coldness and indifferency at the things that are without them,
and do not mind the things pertaining to the flesh, none of its many
hurtful gratifications ; but chastise it, and keep it under, as knowing it
to be the seat of their most dangerous and deadly enemies." '
Pp. 346, 347.
When she had entered her fifty-fourth year, c she began to
e suffer from a tumour, produced by a hurt during her youth,
* which till that time had caused her little or no disturbance, but
f then increased so dangerously that an eminent surgeon decided
Churchtcomen of the Seventeenth Century. 49
c upon the necessity of a most painful operation for removing
' the evil.' The news was converted, by Lady Elizabeth, into a
of ^absolute spiritual comfort.
' " She would not wish to be out of her present situation for all the
world, nor exchange it for any other at any price." For indeed in her
former life she had often expressed some uneasiness that her own suffer-
ings, according to her reckoning of them, should be little or none ; and
one who had a station under her, not unskilled in this kind of know-
ledge, believed that the mighty torrent of sufferings which broke in
upon her at the last was for this purpose among others, to solace her
spirit, and to strengthen her assurance that she had every mark and
token of her favour and acceptance with God.' P. 350.
The disease, only repressed for a time by the operation,
returned with fresh malignity. ' For several months she was
f unable to turn herself in her bed.'
' Yet still she had strength for prayer, and it appeared that not one
hour passed without it.
' She did all she could to comfort her household by her cheerfulness,
and grateful acceptance of their attentions to her, passing by mistakes
or neglects without notice.
' She wrote letters to her friends, or dictated them when she became
unable to write, full of sweet counsel, whilst many came to her house to
see her and hear her last words, for she engaged those about her in hea-
venly conference, as long as she had strength to speak, and preserved
her attention to the speech of others when her strength was gone.
' She delighted in the society of holy persons, and the mutual warmth
and light imparted by communion with them. The more need she had
herself of comfort, and even in the necessary increase of her expenses,
she sought the more to assist those in need, saying often to such as were
about her, " Where is there a poor member of Christ whom I can comfort
and refresh?" ' Pp. 354, 355.
Her deathbed gave her one of those miraculous manifestations
of the glories of the unseen world which have sometimes accom-
panied the deaths of great saints. After receiving the holy
Communion,
' Her soul seemed to receive some of the happiness of heaven ; her
eyes, though languishing under years and sickness, shone bright as
diamonds, (as one said, who was present) and all who looked on were
amazed at the transport now granted to her spirit. She broke out with
a raised accent into words such as these : " Lord ! what is it that
I see ! Oh the greatness of the glory that is revealed in me that is
before me." And some time after she had so said, she fell asleep.'
P. 356.
Our extracts have been longer than we intended, and we
must be bringing our article to a close.
The great cardinal Christian graces, humility, forgiveness
of injuries, prayer, self-mortification, charity, appear throughout
NO. XLIX. N.S. E
50 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
the characters in this book, in that marked, prominent, definite
way which we have spoken of as so peculiar to the Church
system. We can do no more than pass generally over the ground ;
but the general effect is striking ; and not the less so" from the
necessary uniformity which, more or less, attends such a display.
The characters go past us in a kind of procession. Of Lady
Maynard, says Bishop Ken, * Her oratory was the place where
' she principally resided, and where she was most at home. She
* had devotions suited to all the primitive hours of prayer ....
' and, with David, praised God seven times a day, or supplied
* the want of those solemn hours by a perpetuity of ejaculations,
c which she had ready to answer all occasions, and to fill up all
' vacant intervals ; and, if she happened to wake in the night, of
* proper prayers even for midnight she was never unprovided.
' To prayers she added fasting, till her weakness made it impos-
* sible for her constitution ; and yet, even then, on days of absti-
e nence, she made amends for the omission by other supplemental
' mortifications.' Lady Mary Wharton ' constantly observed
' her designed and stated times for secret prayer : in which,
' if she were at any time hindered by entertainment of friends,
/ yet would she redeem time even from sleep.' Lady Halket
' was instant in her private humiliations, fastings, and prayers ;
* making the Psalms the subject of her meditation She set
6 apart every Saturday (being the day of her husband's death)
f for a day of retirement, devotion, and abstinence, and to be
* employed in examining and reviewing the past week.' . . . * She
6 divided the twenty-four hours into three parts, allotting five for
' devotion, ten for necessary refreshment, nine for business : her
( hours of devotion were from five to seven in the morning, from
( one in the afternoon to two, from six to seven, and from nine
' to ten.' ( Healing it recommended, as a great help to a devout
' life, to meditate some time every day on the sufferings of Jesus,
6 she immediately resolved on the practice of it ; and, for the
' better performance of it, she divided the history of His Passion
6 into seven periods, with proper meditations for each day of the
( week.' Lady Jane Cheyne, ' from her youth to her death-
6 bed, failed not of prayer thrice a day.' Of Lady Sophia
Chaworth, it was said in her life-time, ' She keeps invio-
' lably all the primitive hours of devotion, and bestows her
c thoughtful and serious life between the strictest fasting (but
' one spare meal in thirty-six hours ; not so much upon extra-
' ordinary occasions), the most liberal alms to the sick, and
constant prayers.'
The Psalms occupy a large place in their devotions. Lady
Falkland, from f the remembrance of those heavenly comforts
f which she had often received from the Psalms, used to recom-
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 51
* mend them as daily and hourly devotions to people ;' and she was
most acutely pained by the abuse of certain portions of them in
the mouths of the Puritans. 6 Oh, that sweetest harp sounds
6 most harshly,' she would say, ' unless it be touched by pure
f hands.' ( The best legacy I can leave you is my prayers for
6 you, and a verse of David's Psalms, which I command you,
f upon my blessing, to make part of your daily prayers,' is the
last speech of Lady Capel to her children. Lady Clifford
( took especial delight in the Psalter.' A great love of the
Psalms is indeed a feature which runs through all the devotional
characters of our Church ; and the practical use of them, as the
heart's perpetual liturgy, is one of those Catholic traditions
which we have reverentially preserved in our Church. The
place that the Psalter has in our Prayer-book is, of course,
sufficient to account for this without going further. And, indeed,
it is impossible to say how much we owe to this circumstance ;
how much of the old rule and spirit of devotion, which has been
kept up among us, is derived from our Psalter. Our Psalter is
a great fact in our Church ; one that, we see at a glance, must
have a great effect upon minds within her. The Psalms must in-
tone the minds that admit them : they are learnt by heart in child-
hood ; they are heard day after day ; and they become imprinted
on the mind, and act like a groove, in which its religious feelings,
consciously or unconsciously, run. The mind naturalizes them,
and expresses itself through the old familiar channel which its
religious reminiscences have established. The rhythm runs in
the ears ; the alternation beats ; the solemn and sweet flow goes
through the mind like a musical, ever-running stream. The
Church stands, as it were, on the banks, and the Psalms flow
past her, carrying a heavenly fascination with them a spell
upon the senses a calming, steadying, and moulding power over
the religious affections. Songs and hymns have, in all ages, had
this force. National poetry and music is wonderfully significant
of the nation's character, and reacts upon it : the Dorian flute
inspired and steadied the awful march, and ( insupportable ad-
vance,' of that heroic race to the ground of battle ; the Runic
rhymes formed the mysterious Scandinavian tribes. * Give me the
making of the national songs,' said one, ( and I will let who will
make the laws.' Rhythm and flow, uniformity of strain, whole-
ness and consistency, have, by the laws even of nature, a won-
derful charm over the human mind. The nation's lawgiver laid
down her system; her bard directed her feeling. The mind
listens to unity, and obeys the note that sounds again and again,
and does not vary : that is its oracle its guide : it is not ashamed
of an overmastering voice that acts upon it in this way. Religion
takes up the law. She has her bards and her legislators, her laws
E 2
52 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
and her songs : she has strains more powerful than Runic or
Doric, for her disciples. Christianity has the Psalter ; and the
Psalter the Church sounds unceasingly in her children's ears, and
educates them by it. The Psalter is a whole : one tone pervades
it from first to last ; one type of thought, and law of devotion.
The Christian type, no less effectual for the mystery and
reserve of an older dispensation, exists underneath all, and
forms the mind as it is again and again applied to it. The rhythm
wins ; the music tells at last : the tone of the Psalms sinks in,
and mingles with the soul itself, and becomes a part of a man's
religious nature.
f Since,' says Jeremy Taylor, in his preface to his ( Psalter of
* David,' ' according to the instruction of our blessed Saviour,
' God is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, no worshipping
( can be more true, or more spiritual, than the Psalter, said with
f a pure mind and hearty devotion.' He is writing during the
Troubles, and he describes how he takes especially to the
Psalms, to console him in his exile, and with the gloomy prospects
in Church and State before him. It is curious that even the
politician Clarendon does the same thing. The religious im-
pressions which his misfortunes bring on him take him imme-
diately to the Book of Psalms, from his mere habit of mind as a
Churchman. Jeremy Taylor collects a number of expressions,
from the Fathers, about the Psalms, and continues : ( But that
f which pleases me most is the fancy of St. Hilary expounding
f the Psalter to be meant " the key of David," spoken of by
' St. John, in his Revelation : and properly enough ; for, if we
* consider how many mysteries of religion are opened to us in
' the Psalter how many things concerning Christ, what clear
c vaticinations concerning His birth, His priesthood, His kingdom,
' His death, the very circumstance of His passion, His resurrection,
' and all the degrees of His exaltation, more clearly and explicitly
* recorded in the Psalter than in all the old prophets besides,
' we may easily believe that Christ, with the key of David in His
6 hand, is nothing else but Christ fully opened and manifested
f to us in the Psalms. " Almost all the Psalms represent the
* Person of Christ," saith Tertullian. This key of David opens
' not only the kingdom of grace, by revelation of the mysteries
* of our religion, but the kingdom of heaven too. As the ever-
' lasting kingdom is given to the Heir of the house of David, so
( the honour of opening that kingdom is given to the first prince
6 of the family ; the Psalms of his father David are one of the
( best inlets into the kingdom of the Son. Something to this
' purpose is that saying of one of the old doctors : " The saying
' or singing of Psalms opens a way so wide for God to enter into
* the heart, that a devout soul does usually from such an em-
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 53
c ployment, receive the grace of compunction and contrition, or
6 of understanding prophecies." Upon such premises as these,
( or better, the Church of God hath, in all ages, made David's
4 Psalter the greatest part of the public and private devotions ;
' sometimes dividing the Psalter into seven parts, that every
c week's devotion might spend it all. . . . But the practice of this
' devotion I derive from a higher precedent even of Christ and
( His Apostles ; for, before the passion, immediately " they sung
' a psalm."' It was part of David's Psalter that they sung ; it
' was the great Allelujah, as the Jews called it, beginning at the
( 113th Psalm to the 129th exclusively. This devotion continued
' with our blessed Saviour as long as life was in Him ; for, when
' He was upon the cross, He recited the 22d Psalm, " word for
' word," saith the tradition of the Church ; and that He began it,
( saith the Scriptures, " My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken Me ?" Thus it was said of Paul and Silas (Acts xvi.),
* " They prayed a psalm ;" and we have a copy left us of one of
* the prayers, or collects which they made out of the bowels of
' the second Psalm. David was God's instrument to the Church,
' " teaching and admonishing us" in psalms and hymns and spiri-
' tual songs ; and the Spirit of Truth was the grand dictator of
6 what David wrote ; so that we may confidently use this devo-
' tion as the Church of God ever did, making her addresses to
* God most frequently by the Psalms ; so Prudentius reports the
' guise of Christendom :
" Te mente pura simplici
Te voce, te cantu pio
Rogare curvato genu
Flendo et canendo discimus."
. . . ( Against the example of Christ, if we confront the prac-
( tice of Antichrist, nothing can be said greater in commendation
( of this manner of devotion. For Bishop Hippolytus, in his
' Oration of the End of the World, saith that in the days of
* Antichrist, " Psalmorum decantatio cessabit," they shall then
' no more use the singing or saying of Psalms. Which when I
* had observed, without any further deliberation, I fixed upon
6 the Psalter as the best method against him; whose coming,
* we have reason to believe, is not far off; so great preparation
' is making for Him.'
Our Church's use of the Psalms is a point in which she comes
into remarkable contrast with dissenting bodies. Dissenting
bodies do not, that we ever heard of, make any use whatever of
the Psalter, of the kind we are mentioning. 1 The}'- regard the
1 Of course, we mean the Psalms chanted, the only way in which they can be
realized. And this we say, bearing in mind that anomalous body, the Irviugites,
among whom, though the Psalter is daily used, it is significant that it is the (com-
paratively) inadequate Bible version.
54 Churchicomen of the Seventeenth Century.
Psalter, of course, as a part of the Bible, and respect it accord-
ingly, and quote texts from it, as they would from other parts
of the Old Testament. But the particular view of it which
makes it part of the regular Christian task of devotion, got off
by heart, and always ready to be said the liturgical view of the
Psalter they do not seem to have any idea of. It is no part of
education with them. It comes in in the metrical guise, occa-
sionally, and in common with their other hymns for public
singing ; but the Psalter itself is not used ; as a Psalter it lies
dead in their Bibles, and is no practical and familiar strain with
them, as it is with Church people.
To go to another feature the charity and attention to the
poor we have described here, is of a particularly practical, solid,
and circumstantial kind. We often hear this part of charity
undervalued, and made little of, as a part of religion, in compa-
rison with attention to their spiritual wants. There is some
plausibleness, argumentatively speaking, in the view : because it
is impossible to deny that to the persons themselves we attend
on, their own spiritual wants are of more consequence than their
temporal ones. But if it is meant to say that our charity is
more tested by talking to poor people than by feeding and
nursing them, that we entirely deny. The poor, of course,
should and must be talked to ; but the proper natural evidence
to give of our sincerity and wish to do them good in this way,
is to show sympathy with their external wants. The visible is
the test of the invisible. ( He that loveth not his brother
whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not
seen?' The wants that we see are the types of the wants
unseen. The visitor of the poor has a regular legitimate part of
his religious nature appealed to by the external misery and
helplessness of the class. If he does not respond to that appeal,
he fails in the necessary ordeal which his charity has to undergo.
The visible and tangible should impress and unfold him. Chris-
tian charity meets the facts that it comes across, and responds
to phenomena, just as any one of the senses is affected by its
proper object encountering it. The charity which is moved
and touched by the wants of nature, is the only charity which
really goes farther, and really solidly desires to lead its objects
to heaven. The principle is the same on which we must
wish to do either. The view of spiritual attention to the
poor, as put in contrast with sympathy for their physical
wants, is an unreal one. It evades and leaps over the test of
what is solid charity, and elevates itself, and is high above
the earth at once, before it has any real ground to stand
upon at all. An airy delusive exhibition of the spiritual is
then the result ; and artificial phantasmagoria of Christian
love, instead of the natural solid substance, feelings that are not
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 55
felt, and sympathies without heart, mock the poor like a
nightmare.
There is a definiteness and solidity with which these good
Churchwomen go about their ministrations in this department,
which contrasts strikingly with such a view. The flesh stands
out very prominently in their system of charity ; they do not
evade it : they touch and handle, and dress and console it in a
hundred ways. Lady Maynard's
' " charity made her sympathize with all in misery, and besides her pri-
vate alms, wherein her left hand was not conscious to her right, she was
a common patroness to the poor and needy, and a common physician to
her sick neighbours, and would often with her own hands dress their
most loathsome sores, and sometimes keep them in her family, and would
give them both diet and lodging till they were cured, and then clothe
them and send them home, to give God thanks for their recovery, and if
they died, her charity accompanied them sometimes to the very grave,
and she took care even of their burial She would by no means endure
' that by the care of plentifully providing for her children, the want and
necessities of any poor Christian should be overlooked, and desired it
might be remembered that alms and the poor's prayers will bring a
greater blessing to them than thousands a year.' Look abroad now in
the world, and see how rarely you shall meet with a charity like that of
this ( gracious woman,' who, next to her own flesh and blood was tender
of the poor, and thought an alms as much due to them as portions to
her children.
' " To corporal alms, as often as she saw occasion, she joined spiritual,
and she had a singular talent in dispensing that alms to souls ; she had
a masculine reason to persuade, a steady wisdom to advise, a perspicuity
both of thought and language to instruct, a mildness that endeared a
reproof, and could comfort the afflicted from her own manifold expe-
rience of the Divine goodness, and with so condoling a tenderness, that
she seemed to translate their anguish on herself." ' Pp. 137, 138.
Lady Halket's
' charitable disposition led her early to apply herself to the study of
physic and preparing medicines, which might be useful in common cases
of illness and of accidents, especially for the benefit of the poor.
' " Her first notable cure was on a poor maid, whose hand was in a very
dangerous state, having five tents in it, occasioned by a thorn in the
lowest joint of her forefinger: her mother dissuaded her from meddling
with it, believing the maid would lose her hand; but she, confidently
relying on the blessing of God, used her endeavours with such success,
that the patient did perfectly recover without any blemish. This cure
she recorded, blessing God for it, as an encouragement which confirmed
her in the resolution to serve poor distressed persons in this manner, and
as a fresh instance of the comfortable truth that God is the hearer of
prayer : upon which she resolved in all difficulties to make her requests
known to Him, and to depend on His blessing. This was her constant
56 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
practice in administering to sick persons, that she begged God's direction
what to prescribe, and His blessing on it."' Pp. 152, 153.
# # # # #
' " In the summer season she vied with the bee or ant in gathering
herbs, flowers, worms, snails, &c. for the still or limbeck, for the mortar
or boiling pan, and was ordinarily then in a dress fitted for her still-
house, making preparations of extracted waters, spirits, ointments, con-
serves, salves, powders, &c., which she ministered every Wednesday to a
multitude of poor infirm persons, besides what she daily sent abroad to
persons of all ranks, who consulted her in their maladies." ' P. 196.
Forgiveness of injuries is another department of charity, which
is pursued and cultivated in a definite, solid way, as a grace of
itself. They do not leave things to chance. They set them-
selves particular tasks ; they have definite spiritual aims. The
Church has always especially insisted on forgiveness of injuries,
as a test^ of her members ; and the feature comes in very
strikingly often here.
' " And now, after all these great truths," ' says the biographer
of one of these ladies, ' " one grace I must add, greater than
' all I have hitherto mentioned, and it is her humility; she was
' so little given to talk, and had that art to conceal her goodness,
' that it did not appear at first sight, but after some time
' her virtue would break out, whether she would or no ; she
' seemed to be wholly ignorant of her own graces, and had as
' mean an opinion of herself, as if she had had no excellence
' at all ; like Moses, her face shined and she did not know it." '
It is the best kind of humility which hardly knows itself to be
humility. It is really refreshing to see it. It is the crowning
trait, in fact, of a character, wherever we see it, particularly in
religious characters. Religious characters, if we may say so,
even want it more than others ; and its effect is delightful in
proportion to its importance as a desideratum. Religious cha-
racters we use the expression in a wide sense are apt to fall
into the self-contemplative frame : and if they have high thoughts
and feelings, so much the more so. Their very spiritual aspira-
tions are a danger to them in this way. They invert the mind
upon itself, and it thinks a great deal, and of what it does, and
what it feels. In short, religious thinking has a tendency to
make persons conceited. And a more latent, disguised form
of this often exists, where we do not see the fault definitely
in itself, but only in a variety of swelling, bulging excrescences
upon the character which it throws out. It is impossible
not to see how much self-contemplativeness has eaten into
and marred the piety of dissenting bodies, however real and
sincere. Look into the lives of their recorded pious characters,
and you will see what we mean. It seems to be the peculiar
Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century. 57
grace of Church -religion to develop without this alloy, and not
to make a person's religious aspirations stand in the way of his
simplicity; but to allow people to unite the greatest heights
of the spiritual, with the unaffectedness of the most common-
place life.
One word on an important point of spiritual discipline to
which religious minds of this day subjected themselves. It is a
point so completely forgotten at the present day, and which has
been suffered to remain obsolete so long, that we are aware there
is a considerable difficulty in recurring to it, even in the way of
mere allusion, as we do now. It meets us, however, so promi-
nently in the characters before us, that we cannot avoid mention-
ing it ; and mention it is all we shall do at present. We refer
to their practice of consulting spiritual guides. Jeremy Taylor
alludes to it as common among religious persons then, and insists
strongly on it as the substitute for the want of the Church's
public discipline. He seems to give up the former very
much, and throws the Church on the system of ' spiritual
advisers,' as the practical line she was to take. f Because piety
hath suffered shipwreck,' he says, ( and all discipline hath been
lost in the storm, and good manners have been thrown over-
board ; the best remedy in the world that yet remains, arid is
in use amongst the most pious sons and daughters of the Church,
is that they should conduct their repentance by the continual
advices and ministry of a spiritual guide.' The minds we here
come across seem to make this a part of their discipline, and we see
it entering regularly into the practical religious system of the day.
Some spiritual adviser, who is adopted and consulted as such, who
knows the person's whole state of mind, has cases of conscience
put before him, gives directions, and answers doubts and scruples,
is almost always mentioned, whenever the Notice at all enters
into biographical details. Nor does it come in as anything un-
common and out of the way ; it is mentioned simply as a common
fact would be, as if it were part of an order of things. We are,
of course, speaking of religious minds such as those recorded here,
and not of common ones. Such seem then to have had their
spiritual advisers, to whom they opened their consciences,
confessed their faults, and attended for direction. Nor does
the practice present itself simply as a disciplinarian one, but
rather as a source of comfort and assistance. It is obvious how
much, for example, a mind like Lady Falkland's would have
suffered without such help and guidance. It was just the help
she wanted, and she threw herself unreservedly upon it. It is
her spiritual adviser to whom we are indebted for the picture
of her mind, which has been transmitted to us. ( She addressed
* herself to a divine of great eminence for piety and learning,
58 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
6 after her husband's death,' and from him took directions for a
( more strict course of life in her widowhood, than she had
( hitherto pursued.' ( Her zeal in the work of self-examination,
( her strictness with herself, and fear of offending, sometimes
( produced doubts and scruples : and when troubled by them,
6 she seldom trusted her own judgment, but consulted with
' learned divines, and when she met with any one of learning and
' piety, she proposed her cases of conscience, and asked for
' answers. On these occasions she would dispute against herself
( very sharply, but when her objections had once been answered,
' and she was satisfied, she submitted cheerfully, and ordered
6 future practice accordingly.' On her son's death, as she
had done on her husband's, ( fearing that her sorrow is ex-
f orbitant, she goes to ask counsel of her ghostly physician.' She
has relief from his counsel, but is, a short time afterwards,
oppressed again by the idea of the unacceptableness of her repent-
ance, because her sorrow for her son's death seems to her stronger
than her sorrow for her own sins. ( In this anguish of spirit she
< hastens again to her adviser, and returns home with fresh
f courage and cheerfulness.'
The Notice of Lady Capel's life comes from the same source ;
from the pen of her ' spiritual adviser ; ' Lady Maynard's from
the same. f " I had the honour to know her near twenty years,"
' says Bishop Ken of the latter, " and to be admitted to her most
6 intimate thoughts, and I cannot but think, upon the utmost of
' my observation, that she always preserved her baptismal in-
( nocence, that she never committed any one mortal sin, which
( put her out of the state of grace ; insomuch, that after all the
' frequent and severe examinations she made of her own con-
6 science, her confessions were made up of no other than sins of
( infirmity, and yet even for them she had as deep an humilia-
* tion, and as penitential a sorrow, as high a sense of the divine
( forgiveness, and loved so much, as if she had much to be for-
' given." '
Another religious trait that we observe, has, perhaps, a con-
nexion with the one we have been mentioning : they both seem
to belong to the same religious atmosphere, and to be fruits of
the same tree: we mean the directly religious conversation
which seems to have been usual then among religious persons.
Every one knows how rigidly the present order of things
excludes this : ajid certainly, under present circumstances, one
could not wish to see the bar removed. As things are, and with
our present tone, religion could not enter directly into conver-
sation, without a violation of our natural reserve and modesty.
But it does not appear a healthy state of things, in which such
a result is seen. Certainly, in the religious society in the
Churchicomen of the Seventeenth Century. 59
Church, two centuries ago, they seem to have been able to do
this, and to do it naturally, without any revulsion, and anything
to get over in the matter. We do not say that they talked in large
parties in this way, but in ordinary, quiet conversation they do
not seem to have been shy of the subject. ' " Next to the service
* of the temple," ' we hear of one, ( " there was no entertainment
* in the whole world so pleasing to her as the discourse of
' heavenly things, and those she spoke of with such a spiritual
' relish, that at first hearing you might perceive she was in
6 earnest, that she really * tasted the Lord was good,' and felt
' all she spake." ' Of another, f " she delighted in the society of
* holy persons, and the mutual warmth and light imparted by
' communion with them.'" We repeat, we are far from wishing
persons now to { talk religion.' Those who alone could ever do
it naturally and in taste, could not do it now. It would be a
struggle against the whole tone of things. Let them try, and
they will find that the words stick in their mouths, before they
get them out. But this state of extreme reserve and disguise
among religious members of the same Church, is surely not a
natural state. It could not be intended in the Christian dispen-
sation, that persons should be ashamed to talk to one another
about religion ; and should be deprived of the support of one
another's voices on the subject : and it would not be amiss if
persons had a sense of this, and accustomed themselves to regard
as a standard, and put as an aim before their minds, another, and a
more confiding and communicative, state of things. In a certain
school there is plenty of religious conversation, it is true. We do
not want that style of conversation. A Catholic mind should bear
any degree of reserve and restraint, rather than part with its mo-
desty. But is that a right state of things to begin with, in which
it is necessarily immodest to talk about religion ? Is not religion
made too much now a matter simply between the individual and
God. Minds shut themselves up, and refuse to let any one
know what is in them ; and there is awkwardness and suspicion
where there should be sympathy. No one will open out to
friend, or pastor, or spiritual guide. There is no confession, no
assisting, no advising, no guiding. There is nothing mutual,
nothing social in religion : every one goes on by himself. This
is hardly a state of things which the New Testament points to.
We profess to reject all tradition, and to go simply and purely
by the picture of Christianity which we have in the New
Testament itself. Can any one look at that picture, and say that
this is it ? We individualize Christianity, and make every single
mind's religious growth a cavernous, isolated history of its own,
carried on by individual impulses, movements, and efforts entirely,
and the work of individual will and strength. We do not make
60 Churchwomen of the Seventeenth Century.
the individual one of the body, thus giving him the benefit of the
love, sympathies, intercession around, and bringing all the good
influences moving in the Christian society to bear upon him. Our
image of Christianity wants altering : we have a wrong image in
our minds. The individual's spiritual Christian growth is not a
solitary internal process only as we image it one between
himself and God only : it is a social process. Even that very
internal process of spiritual self-improvement, which, as dis-
tinguished from the more public sphere of religion, we make so
absolutely and decidedly an individual process, is not an indi-
vidual one but a social one. Carry your Christianity into the
most inmost recesses, its most central workings, to its very seat
and fountain-head within the soul, to that point where the will
collects itself, where the strain is made, and where it is most
one's own real self acting, even here it is not individual, but
social. There are proper degrees, shapes, modifications of
sociality, but still Christianity is essentially social. Not an
arithmetical crowd of stiff erect individualities, not a host of
straight strokes that do not touch each other, but one great
mingling of hearts, one overflowing unity, wave embracing w^ave ;
an ocean of the spiritual life, filling every corner, and allowing
no separations and isolations within its bosom, is the living
Church. The individual is not a spiritual world within himself:
he belongs to the spiritual world universal. He is a connected
relative being: he depends for his growth on this connexion
and these relations being used and developed. In the career
of one human soul are involved the influences, seen and
unseen, of the whole spiritual world it is in. ' Whether one
* member suffer, all the members suffer with it ; or one member
( be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.' There is no
6 schism in the body ;' and its members have ( care one for another.'
This whole idea wants being impressed upon us. The idea of
communion, participation, fellowship is not embraced, and
should be. Religion wants unbending and expanding: souls
should be brought together ; Christians should understand each
other; hearts should respond to each other; there should be places
for openness and confidence within the bosom of the Church.
61
ART. III. 1. Diary of Travels in France and Spain, chiefly in
the Year 1844. By the Rev. FRANCIS TRENCH. 2vols. London:
Bentley. 1845.
2. Rome and the Reformation ; or, a Tour in the South of France.
A Letter to the Rev. R. Burgess. By I. H. MERLE D'AUBIGN^.
London: Seeleys. 1844.
3. Letters from the Pyrenees. By T. CLIFTON PARIS, B. A.
Trinity College, Cambridge. 2 vols. London: Murray. 1843.
4. Vacation Rambles and Thoughts. By T. N. TALFOURD, D. C. L.
2 vols. London: E. Moxon. 1845.
5. A Pilgrimage to Auvergne, from Picardy to Le Velay. By
LOUISA S. COSTELLO. 2 vols. London: Bentley. 1842.
THE steady and unfailing issue of voyages and travels, though as
familiar and long-established an affair as that of cottons, or
any other article of general consumption, is yet not a little
curious, if we reflect on it. That the stream of poetry, meta-
physics, or novels, should flow on, ever fresh and fresh, is natural ;
for invention and imagination are inexhaustible sources; but,
when the business is simply description of a country and people,
an account of manners and scenes, even that wonderful richness
and variety which the face of nature, and the condition of
humanity, present, must at last be exhausted, and transferred to
paper, by the innumerable hands and pens employed in the task.
For a tourist to find untrodden ground is quite impossible. To
say nothing of Europe, every corner of which is as well known
to us, or better, than the county of Kent ; is there a square yard
of ground in all the five continents which the restless curiosity of
English travellers has not raked up ? a building, a rock, or a
tree, which they have not catalogued ? In the most obscure and
latent island in the South Sea, would one not, reversing the case
of Robinson Crusoe, be alarmed if one did not see the print of a
foot ? There has, indeed, almost ceased to be any such thing as
a foreign country ; we are at home everywhere, and all the world
is a home to us. Sporting M.P.s have their Chateau in Pro-
vence, or their Schloss in Hungary, instead of a shooting-box on
the moors ; and Oxford and Cambridge students go for fly-fishing,
in the long vacation, to Norway, instead of to Wales.
But, the truth is, that novelty of scene is now no longer the
chief recommendation in a book of travels. It is true that much
interest must always attach to such revelations of hidden things
as Stephens' of the cities of central America; and those who seek
for the more stimulating class of excitement will be attracted by
62 Continental Travel.
the exploits of Captain Forbes, who bags his twenty brace of
tigers per diem in the jungles of Ceylon ; or of Major Harris,
who thinks nothing of his three rhinoceroses before breakfast, in
the Highlands of Ethiopia. These desperate efforts to find, in
the age of railways, the field of the wild and marvellous adventure
of a by-gone time, are, like Don Quixote's quest of chivalry, a
day too late. A much truer and wider interest is obtained by a
very different class of travels. In these, the more at our own
doors the scene, the more ordinary the incident, and, in keeping
with this, a style plain and homely, the better ; .the more beaten
the track chosen by the traveller, the more likely he is to find
readers ; and
' Talking of the Alps and Apennines,
The Pyrenean, and the river Po,'
is more attractive than a six months' campaign in Ashantee, or a
survey of Tehuantepec.
Among many other causes which might be assigned for this,
the following is, perhaps, the principal : In former times the
great readers of travels were those who never travelled. Not to
go back to the days of Bruce and Dr. Clarke, when Englishmen,
except of the highest ranks, hardly ever quitted their own
country, the continental war retarded the natural progress of the
habit of promiscuous travelling. Thus, at the peace, when the
adventurous spirits had nothing to do, or to detain them from
roaming through the earth at will, there was a rich harvest of
new countries, and new nations, and tribes, civilized and savage,
to visit and describe, and novelty was thus the chief recom-
mendation of a book of travels. The bulk of readers were then
the tarry-at-home travellers, who read of places they had never
seen, nor formed the desire to see, with the greater interest on
that very account ; but now a new generation of readers has
arisen of those who have travelled, or hope to travel, and whose
interest in a volume of travels arises from its going over the very
ground themselves have lately visited, or are looking to with
pleasant anticipation. We derive the same sort of pleasure
from reading a tour under these circumstances that we do
from comparing notes, in the public room of the inn, with the
traveller whom chance throws in our way in the evening. As
in this viva voce communication, intelligence and observation are
desirable, yet not so indispensable but that one can learn some-
thing from the most ordinary and common-place persons, so it is
with the written tour, the most meagre diary, even a bare record
of dates and distances, will be gone through with interest during
that process of f conning of maps and guide-books which precedes
* a tour.' To this class belong Nos. 1 and 3 of the books whose
Continental Travel 63
titles stand at the head of this Article, and to which we shall
return presently. We wish, first, to say a few words on one
source of interest peculiar to travellers in any country with whose
history we may happen to be familiar.
On the pleasure and benefit to be derived from a tour in such
a country, in respect of historical knowledge, we dwelt at some
length in a former number. Besides this study of historical sites,
there is another pregnant point of view in which the instructed
traveller may regard the country he visits in its physical geo-
graphy.
' Let us consider a little what a knowledge of geography is. First,
I grant, it is a knowledge of the relative position and distance of places
from one another ; and by places, I mean either towns or the habitations
of particular tribes or nations ; for I think our first notion of a map is
that of a plan of the dwellings of the human race ; we connect it strictly
with man and with man's history. And here I believe many persons'
geography stops ; they have an idea of the shape, relative position, and
distance of different countries ; and of the position, that is, as respects
the points of the compass, and mutual distance of the principal towns.
Every one, for example, has a notion of the shapes of France and of
Italy, that one is situated north-west of the other, and that their
frontiers join ; and again, every one knows that Paris is situated in the
north of France, Bordeaux in the south-west, &c. Thus much of know-
ledge is indeed indispensable to the simplest understanding of history.
Yet, you will observe that this knowledge does not touch the earth
itself, but only the dwellings of men upon the earth. It regards the
shapes of a certain number of great national estates, so to call them ;
the limits of which, like those of individuals' property, have often
respect to no natural boundaries, but are purely arbitrary. A real
knowledge of geography embraces at once a knowledge of the earth, and
of the dwellings of man upon it ; it stretches out one hand to history,
and the other to geology and physiology; it is just that part in the
dominion of knowledge where the students of physical and of moral
science meet together.
' And without denying the usefulness of that plan-like knowledge of
geography of which I have spoken, it cannot be doubted that a far
deeper knowledge of it is required by him who would study history
effectively. And the deeper knowledge becomes far the easier to remem-
ber. For my own part, I find it extremely difficult to remember the
position of towns, when I have no other association with them than
their situation relatively to each other. But let me once understand
the real geography of a country, its organic structure if I may so call it,
the form of its skeleton, that is, of its hills ; the magnitude and course
of its veins and arteries, that is, of its streams and rivers ; let me con-
ceive of it as of a whole made up of connected parts ; and then the
position of man's dwellings, viewed in reference to these parts, becomes
at once easily remembered, and lively and intelligible besides.' Arnold's
Lectures, p. 158.
64 Continental Travel.
If, then, a knowledge of this kind of geography be requisite
for a full understanding of history, it is a knowledge which can
be rightly acquired only by personal travel. A good description,
aided by a good map, may, however, do something towards con-
veying such a conception of a country ; and this, it is evident,
is all we can have in respect of far the greater part of the
countries whose history we read of; and the profit each person
will derive from such a description will be in the degree in which
he has formed the habit of looking at the face of a country with
a topographical eye. As an instance, in illustration of the kind
of geographical view above characterized, we will cite part of a
masterly description of France, by M. Michelet.
( Let us take a look at France as a whole, that we may see into what
divisions it naturally breaks itself.
1 Mount one of the most elevated peaks of the Vosges, or, if you
prefer it, of Jura, and let us turn our back upon the Alps. We may
discern, supposing our vision able to command an horizon of three
hundred leagues, an undulating line reaching from the wooded hills of the
Luxembourg, and the Ardennes, to the valleys of the Vosges, and from
thence continued along the vine slopes of Burgundy, and the volcanic
masses of the Cevennes, till it joins the prodigious wall of the Pyrenees.
This line marks the separation of the waters. To the west of this line the
Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne flow towards the ocean ; behind it,
the Meuse and the Moselle turn to the north, the Saone and the Rhone
to the Mediterranean. In the far distance are discerned what seem two
islands in this continent ; Bretagne, rugged and low, simple quartz and
granite, a solid breakwater placed at the corner of France to receive the
shock of the Atlantic, and the currents of the Channel ; in another
direction rises the green Auvergne, the stiffened lava bed of forty extinct
volcanoes.
' The basins of the Rhone and the Garonne, important as they are,
are only secondary in this expanse of land. The life of this body is
concentrated to the north. There the grand movements of the nations
have taken place. The stream of mankind poured itself from Germany
that way in ancient times. The great political struggle of modern
times is between France and England. These two peoples stand, front
to front, as in an attitude of defiance. England presents to France
her Teutonic face, and withdraws into her rear-guard her Celts of Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland. France, on the other hand, backed up by her
German provinces, Lorraine and Alsace, opposes to England a Celtic
front. Each country exhibits to the other its most hostile element.
1 In latitude, the zones of France are easily marked by their products.
In its northern zone the rich and wide plains of Flanders, with their
crops of flax and rape, and the hop, that bitter vine of the north. About
Rheims commences the real vine ; all froth and effervescent in
Champagne, rich and warm in Burgundy, it becomes heavy and stupi-
fying in Languedoc, to recover its spirit at Bordeaux. At Montauban
the mulberry and the olive begin to show themselves j but these tender
Continental Travel. 65
children of the south have but a precarious life in this unequal climate.
Thus, Arthur Young says, " France may be divided into three principal
belts ; the first, the vineyards ; the second, the maize ; the third, the
olives. The, three districts are thus distinguished ; first, that of the
north, in which are no vineyards ; the central, in which is no maize ;
the southern, which produces vines, maize and olives, all three. The
line of demarcation between the country of the vineyards, and that in
which the vine is not cultivated, would pass, as I have ascertained by per-
sonal observation, through Coucy, three leagues north of Soissons, thence
to Clermont in the Beauvoisin, to Beaumont in Maine, and on to Herbig-
nay in Bretagne." These limits, though perhaps too rigorously drawn,
are at this day sufficiently exact in the main.' Hist, de France, ii. 1 65.
This specimen, which is only a short extract from a survey of
Prance, executed in the same admirable style, in which imagina-
tion is so happily made to subserve fact, and the widest general-
ization combined with minute observation, may well compare
with the example given by Dr. Arnold of his own definition of
true geographical knowledge his description of Italy. Though
this physical geography is quite distinct from the special science
of geology, and requires merely a habit of exerting the common
powers of observation possessed by most men, without any
scientific training, it yet admits of considerable illustration from
that science. For example, when geologists tell us that the
Paris basin, a region of about 180 miles in length, and 90 in
breadth, is a lacustrine formation ; that a lake, or arm of the
sea, once occupied the valley of the Seine, which has been
filled up by alternating groups of marine and* freshwater strata
and that in the two next valleys, tbose of the Loire and the
Allier, there are considerable tracts of similar formation, show-
ing the existence at one period of several chains of lakes all
pointing like radii to the central mass of the Auvergne moun-
tains, 1 what an exact counterpart is here in fact, or, at least, in
science, to the picture drawn merely to the eye of the observer
in the extract we quoted above ! Michelet's metaphor, ' an ocean
of land,' is matter of fact in geology.
But leaving these speculations, which are only one out of the
many views, by proposing which to himself a traveller may reap
instruction from every mile of ground he moves over, however
apparently uninteresting, we come to the subjects of our notice.
And, indeed, in none of the four will any views of this kind be
found suggested. We say four, for the trashy pamphlet, No. 2,
has no pretensions whatever to the name of ' Tour,' which is
prefixed to it. The writer, who has gained a sort of notoriety by a
book on the Reformation, seems aware, when he has finished
his ( Tour,' that he has nothing to tell, for he adds, in a P.S.,
i * See Lyell's Geology, vol. iv.
NO. XLIX. N. S. F
66 Continental Travel
' Forgive me for sending you so uninteresting a letter ; I wished to
satisfy your request, and yet I could not give up the necessary time for
so doing.' D'Aubigne.
A very good reason, we should have thought, for not writing,
and not publishing though here, perhaps, the Chelsea corre-
spondent is in fault but hardly one for the contrary proceeding.
Of all the paid tourists who, in the pithy negro phrase, ' take
walk, make book,' we have met with none more stupid and
empty than the authoress whom we have placed last in our list.
She belongs to the class of legendary tourists ; of those, that is,
who append to every place they visit a long string of marvellous
histories, such as may be raked together in great abundance out
of the Chronicles and Acta Sanctorum, but which are deprived of
all their beauty and all their meaning by being accompanied
with quizzing comments, designed to be witty, but generally
only succeeding in being vulgar and impudent, They are not
given us as true histories, or as true extracts from such and such
chronicles, nor even in the antiquarian spirit as illustrative of
the times, but simply, it would seem, for the sake of mocking at
them, as illustrative of a foolish credulity. It is surprising how
a person can go through the trouble of reading and copying so
much of what is to them mere trash, which has nothing amusing
or attractive in itself, and from all which, if multiplied ten thou-
sand fold, but one and the same everlasting moral is to be drawn,
' how foolish men were five hundred years ago.' If the retailers
of the historical reminiscences of the towns visited are tiresome,
these are odious.
But if our readers would judge of Miss Costello's fitness for
handling the history of the past, by her mode of viewing the
present, let them take the following specimen :
' The promenades on the ramparts (at Dijon) are delightful on every
side ; those beneath and beyond, planted in what must have been
formerly the moats and outer defences, all are charming ; in fact, it is
impossible anywhere to possess greater conveniences for out-of-door
amusement than at Dijon ; and here, for the first time, we observed an
appearance of enjoyment amongst the population, not merely confined
to the lower orders, for whose exclusive entertainment and recreation
everything seems made in France. Along the alleys leading to the
park, ladies may be met on horseback accompanied by their cavaliers ;
groups of walkers are seen, as in the Champs Elysees, at Paris ; elegant
toilettes appear, and the actual existence is evident of a genteel middle
class, rarely to be found out of Paris. Indeed, the total absence of this
class throughout the country renders the towns extremely dull ; in
every town there are promenades, but no persons are to be seen there,
hut the common people, whose costume, though picturesque sometimes
in a landscape, is sufficiently monotonous unmixed with others of a
Continental Travel. 07
more refined stamp. To an eye accustomed, as we are in England, to see
a crowd composed of all ranks, it is dreary and unpleasant to meet with
no figures but those of peasants in places where their manners are
unsuitable,' &c. Costello, vol. i. p, 295,
When the social condition of modern France is treated in this
profound and sensible manner, the reader may easily conceive
how the religious and miraculous history of the middle ages fares
in such hands.
Mr. Trench's ( Diary of Travels,' offers little or nothing of
novelty. It is evidently rather written for the amusement of an
extensive circle of friends, for whose use the author has been
kind enough to print it, than with any view to the public. Those
who take an interest in the personal movements of the amiable
author and his lady, may, perhaps, read the two volumes with
pleasure; those who seek information on the present state of
France will not find it here. Indeed, the amount of information
with which the author himself starts on his f Tour,' appears to be
rather below the average of that generally possessed about a
country by those who undertake the, now common, labour of
writing two volumes about it. The things he thinks it necessary
to explain are, that ( Temple Protestant' is the distinguishing
appellation of a Protestant chapel; the difference between a
Cure and Vicaire, between a College and a Seminaire ; and,
though born at Orleans, his parents being 'detenus,' and
himself having paid repeated visits to the country, he was ignorant
of the title by which a French bishop is usually addressed in
conversation. We have, in the outset, a voluntary engagement
that Murray's Hand-book shall not be quoted a promise which
is too often broken ; f that valuable work ' being laid under con-
tribution on every occasion. For ( a very interesting sketch of
c Louis the Eleventh's character, and the extension of the French
' monarchy under his reign,' we are referred to * Robertson's View
of the State of Europe ;' and the ( Outlines of History,' or the
' Tales of a Grandfather,' apparently furnish much of the e historical
matter,' which is introduced at the proper places.
If it were the case that an oft-trodden ground ceases to yield
materials for f Tours,"* this would be a reason for not writing them ;
but it is not so. We may refer, as an instance in point, to a
book which has lately appeared ( Three Years in Constanti-
nople ; or, Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1844 ;' by
C. White, Esq. three volumes more full of details, for the most
part of very great value and interest, we never saw ; and we
could hardly have believed it possible, after all that has been
written about the East, that so much of novelty remained to be
produced.
And this in the way of hard, substantial fact. Another class
F 2
68 Continental Travel
of tour-writers can give freshness to the most familiar track by
the aid of imagination, and the gift of poetical description. Mr.
Beckford's ( Italy ' is one of the most striking instances of this.
Sergeant Talfourd, whose f Vacation Rambles ' we have placed
at the head of this article, belongs to this class of writers. Who
has not read sheets upon sheets of Alpine description? yet, who
would not be gratified with reading the following picture of the
fall of an avalanche ?
1 The effect of the vision of the Jungfrau from this spot, grand and
surprising, was yet almost as strange as grand. From the natural
platform on which you stand, the ground, covered with coarse grass,
shelves rapidly to a dark scrubby wood, and directly beyond, as if only a
narrow belt of coppice were between, rises into heaven the huge mass of
snow-clad mountains, dazzling in purest white, except where broken by
black ribs of rock, or by some huge brown, storm-swept hollow. It is
in vain that you are assured that your eye is distant some miles from
the nearest point of Alpine snow on which it rests, and that between
your feet and the roots of the opposite mass of Alps, is a huge defile
which a shepherd-boy could not traverse in a long summer's day ; you
cannot resist the conviction that you are on the verge of the eternal
snow, or the fancy that it is all a delusion, a freak of Nature, who has
anticipated the Diorama, and cheats and delights you with an artful
picture of her own. You hear the thunder of the unseen avalanches
among the recesses of the mountains, and the conviction that you are
close to the unmelting pinnacle which defies the scorching heat, becomes
yet more intense. But it shall be disturbed. How 1 By the sight of
that which, unseen, was so terrible ! From some jutting knob, of the size
of a cricket-ball, a handful of snow is puffed into the air, and lower
down, on the neighbouring slant, you observe veins of white substance
creaming down the crevices, like the tinsel streams in the distance of a
pretty scene in an Easter melo-drama, quickened by a touch of magic
wand, and then a little cloud of snow as from pelting fairies, rises from
the frost-work basin, and then a sound as of a thunder clap, and all is
still and silent ; and this is an avalanche ! If you can believe this, can
realize the truth that snow and ice have just been dislodged in power
to crush a human village, you may believe in the distance at which you
stand from the scene, and that your eye is master of icy precipices, em-
bracing ten miles perpendicular ascent ; but it is a difficult lesson, and
the disproportion between the awful sound and the pretty sight renders
it still harder. We saw two avalanches during the hour and a half
which we spent in front of the cottage; and learned two other illustra-
tions of the truth, that amidst the grandeur of the universe, " seeing"
is not always " believing." ' Talfourd.
Though, however, Mr. Trench has none of the powers exem-
plified in this beautiful piece of description, and though his
remarks verge constantly upon the confines of truism, yet a
reader who has once fairly begun his volumes will find, we think,
an attraction about them sufficient to carry him through them.
Continental Travel " 69
This is the perfect naturalness, the tone of genuine honesty, and
total absence of all ambitious pretence, which is found in them.
There is none of that effort and aim at good writing, which
gives a theatrical varnish to the books of more expert scribblers.
Though he has swollen his pages with trite and school-boy texts
of history, yet this is with no book-making view. And though
he carefully notes down everything he hears, however trivial
table d'hote conversation, observations of the waiters and
chambermaids, &c., yet it is with no notion of getting them up
for the New Burlington-street market. He is an English
clergyman, neither more nor less, who just sees what a man of
common sense, without any book-learning, would see, and tells
it, without thinking whether he is telling it well or ill in short,
in the tone of ordinary conversation. It is the unaffected sim-
plicity that pleases so in the older travellers, before travelling
became a trade, when you are made to feel that you are moving
along with them, and seeing what they saw, be it much or little,
tame or striking. We give such a writer our confidence, and
repose implicitly in his statements, and would repeat them with
a full security, which we should, unconsciously almost, withhold
from the glittering and finished accounts of the regular anecdote-
monger.
Mr. Trench set out in September, 1843, and, passing down
the western side of France, made a dip into Spain, in and out
among the Pyrenees, returned through Auvergne and central
France to Paris, in September, 1844. His mode of travelling, if
not novel, was different from that of ordinary travellers, and one
peculiarly favourable for seeing a country being a small open
carriage, drawn by a pair of ponies. The ponies themselves
become almost the heroes of the travellers' epos. Inclusive of a
stay of three months at Tours, during which they were employed
in excursions into the neighbourhood, this time was one of un-
ceasing locomotion for the ponies, who accomplished their thirty
or forty miles a-day ; and as we do not hear of their being at all
the worse at their journey's end, ' la petite grise' and ' la petite
rouge 1 must be very admirable little creatures, and quite worthy
of the attention their master seems to have paid them. French
roads are still mostly bad, up to the axletree often, in summer,
in dust, in winter, in mud ; but a great improvement has taken
place since Mr. Swinburne, seventy years ago, described the
road from Calais to Dieppe as ( scarcely passable :'
' It runs through narrow lanes, or hollow passes, in the middle of the
boundless corn-fields, worn so deep that the top of the carriage did not
appear. We were often obliged to cross ploughed lands and ditches to
escape dangerous holes, and I was sometimes compelled to call in a person
to assist me in keeping the coach in its proper equilibrium. In spite of
70 Continental Travel.
all our care, it was once overturned. The next day we had to ascend
a lofty hill, where there did not seem to be any trace of a high-road.'
Courts of Europe, vol. i.
Among the mountains a pedestrian may have the best of it,
but, in the level plains of France, we cannot fancy any method
of travelling more advantageous than this for gaining a know-
ledge of a country. And the pretty little vignettes, which
appear, here and there, among the pages, (far better than the
more showy lithographs,) show that this opportunity was not
lost.
We should not, however, have been induced to pay so much
attention to these volumes, but for one feature which they
possess, to us a very painful one, on which we must now
proceed to say a few words. We were caught by the following
announcement in the Preface :
1 1 was desirous that the absence from home should not be without
objects and aims in accordance with the character of a Clergyman of the
Church of England; I was desirous to make myself acquainted, by
personal investigation, with the state of religion in France, and chiefly on
two points ; viz. on the hold which the Romish faith and ceremonies
have on the population of the country, and on the degree in which the
doctrines of the Protestant Church prevail at present in the land.'
Trench, vol. i.
Now, as the state of religion in France is a subject of the
highest interest, as the elements of good and of evil are strug-
gling with more active intensity there than, perhaps, in any other
country of Europe at present, we gladly seize every opportunity
of gaining intelligence of the progress of the struggle. What
we have already said, however, will have prepared our readers
to expect, what we soon found to be the case, that Mr. Trench
had little information of this character to afford. We were
prepared to differ from him, more or less, in our measures of
good and evil, in our estimate of this or that outward exhibition
of faith ; but we had not reckoned upon finding so entire an
alienation from the spirit of the One Catholic and Apostolic
Church, so utter a want of sympathy with her history, or anxiety
for her welfare, of feeling for her sufferings and her travail, as
we found here. Not that Mr. Trench is a man indifferent to
religion. Far from it. Unlike too many of our touring Clergy, who
occupy themselves abroad solely with secular thoughts, anxious to
get rid of their profession for the time, and to give themselves a
brief liberty from that little constraint which English decorum
requires at home, Mr. Trench acts and thinks like a person to
whom religion of his own sort is the uppermost subject in his
mind. Not only are we not offended by details of ( gourmandise,'
or the repeated complaints of the discomforts of inns, the badness
Continental Travel. 71
.of dinners, and the extortions of landlords, which make up so
large a part of the impressions of travellers in general, but a tone
of piety pervades the whole book ; and, what is especially rare,
there is not a single expression of flippancy or lightness, hardly
of bitterness, throughout not even in condemning what he
regards as the superstitions of Rome. Scripture is constantly
brought to his mind, not always in the happiest style of allusion,
we think, as where the situation of Angouleme on a hill brings
to his mind ( the mountains that are round about Jerusalem.'
(Psalm cxxv. 1, 2.)
It is not, then, to a want of religious feeling that we must
ascribe the barrenness of Mr. Trench's pages on the real state of
religion in France. The cause lies rather in the head than in
the heart in the narrowness of his views, in the confined
horizon, which is the result of certain early prejudices, and which
cuts off the school of religionists who cherish them from all
vision of the extent and lineaments of the Church Universal.
In a country filled with memorials of every high and saintly
virtue, of a fervent Christian piety and devotion, and all the
abundant fruits of Divine grace which age after age brought
forth, and have left, at least, as a lesson and an inheritance to
the present in the country of Pascal, and Bossuet, andFenelon
names which our own Church has always held in the highest
reverence, Mr. Trench sees no religion, beyond the limits of one
small and miscellaneous sect, no Church beyond the walls of the
* Temple Protestant ;' all these rich and copious annals of
God's gracious dealings with His Church are veiled from his
eyes by one word Popery. Where the prejudices that this
powerful spell commands have been diligently cherished as
part, a primal part, of religion, a state of mind is produced
which is the ( crassa ignorantia ' of divines, a thick darkness,
in which even honest and fair minds become hopelessly per-
verted.
To the same cause may be ascribed his silly arguments against
Roman doctrines, which he does not understand, and cannot
even state correctly, but for eradicating which he thinks nothing
more necessary than a plentiful dispersion of French Bibles;
sowing them broad-cast, so many to the square mile.
' I received from Mr. D. some interesting accounts concerning the
sale of Bibles and Testaments by means of colporteurs. At Perigueux
a colporteur had sold in one year seventeen hundred Bibles and Testa-
ments, and at another period thirteen hundred in eight months. My
informant . . . had sold in the mountains, in three weeks, one hundred
and seventy-seven Testaments and four Bibles. They select a certain
district, and offer the Scriptures for sale from house to house. The
usual price is tenpence for the Testaments, and from two shillings and
72 Continental Travel
a penny to two shillings and sixpence for Bibles/ Trench, vol. i.
p. 231.
It is impossible to repress a smile at the naive complacency of
the following : ' We were giving away some tracts on our
c departure, and, as the Priest was looking on, I requested his
' acceptance of a French translation of Legh Richmond's " Young
4 Cottager," which he readily received. Can he, or any one else,
* fail to be interested with that delightful memoir?' Imagine a
French Priest, of the most ordinary education, who has hardly
ever out of his hand his breviary, in which almost every day is
set apart to the memory of some Saint, whose patrimonial
inheritance, so to say, is the whole array of Saints and Martyrs,
Gallican and Catholic, from S. Martin down to S. Vincent of
Paul, who 'through faith wrought righteousness, subdued king-
doms, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions' imagine
him invited to forego all this, and to substitute in its place ( The
Youn<j Cottager,' or ' The Dairyman's Daughter,' and requested
to believe that true Christianity never visited his part of the
country till brought there by an amiable and neatly dressed
gentleman, amusing his leisure by a pleasure tour in his own
carriage, with his wife and servants, or by a mercenary colpor-
teur, of the stamp of the infamous Borrow, with a keen eye to
the commission he gets on the amount of ( the Bibles and
Prayers ' he succeeds in ' putting off! '
But this blindness would be his own loss, and would be too
common a case to call for these remarks, if it went no further
than affecting Mr. Trench's views of the Church of Rome. His
views assume a most distinct and intelligible shape in a series of
acts, over which we most unaffectedly mourn, and which call for
our most decided condemnation as attached members of the
English Church. We mean his habitual and unqualified com-
munion with the French Protestants. Not now and then, as
out of curiosity, or by accident, or as a choice of evils, or with
misgivings, but on all possible occasions, by choice, and with
eagerness, without a hint of any difference of doctrine or prac-
tice, nay, with constant expressions of fervent sympathy, he
associates with them in their worship, officiates for them^ receives
the ministrations of their ministers, and assumes, in a matter-of-
course way, which would be arrogant if it were not so very
simple, that the light of the Gospel in France is confined to the
Protestant schismatical bodies. Here is an ordained minister of
the Church of England, a body which claims to be part of the
Universal Church, which assumes itself to be on the same footing
with the other Catholic Churches of the East and West, to have
the same Sacraments, the same grace of Orders, the same Apo-
Continental Travel. 73
stolical Succession, the same commission from Christ, which the
rest of the Visible Church throughout the world possesses he
goes out of his own country, into one where one of these sister
Churches is in possession, and finds his natural home and fellow-
ship ; not indeed in this sister Church that we know, and lament
our Church mourns the necessity which breaks or suspends com-
munion, where, and where alone, we would seek it where we
pray daily that it may be given when we pray for ' the good
estate of the Catholic Church.' No ; he finds himself at once
one in heart and spirit with miscellaneous bodies of sectarians,
condemned by this sister Church, excluded by her from her
fold, and reckoned among her most deadly and unremitting
enemies !
There are two aspects under which we may consider our rela-
tion to foreign Protestants Doctrine and Practice. And first
as to Doctrine, The high position taken by the Church of
England is that she is not merely a Church, but the visible
Church, in this realm, and this not merely because she is recog-
nised by the State, or because she has legal inheritance, or
technical jurisdiction, but because she is part of the one living
Body of Christ ; because she has the true Sacraments of salva-
tion through the Apostolic descent of her Bishops.
( True sacraments' [we quote from a popular work which happens to
be at hand *] ' being those which are " duly administered " by " lawful
ministers;" such sacraments being not "bare signs" of things absent,
but " the means whereby we receive," in the one, " a death unto sin, and
a new birth unto righteousness," and in the other "the body and blood
of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful
in the Lord's Supper;" and that the Church "hath authority in contro-
versies of faith," hath the power to " teach," to " decree," to " excommu-
nicate" (the words of the Articles), and does not give every individual
preacher, much less every individual Christian, permission to take down
his Bible, and make out from it his own scheme of doctrine, or system
of Church government.'
And, lastly, not to weary with proving what all our readers
will admit, she teaches (Ordination Service)
' That it is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scrip-
tures and ancient authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been
three orders of ministers in Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests, and
Deacons. No man shall be accounted or taken to be a lawful Bishop,
Priest, or Deacon, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted
thereunto according to the form hereafter following, or hath had
formerly episcopal consecration or ordination.'
Now, is this claim of our Church a mockery, and are all these
1 Plain Words to Plain People.
74 Continental Travel.
words without meaning, that a Minister of this Church shall
identify himself with bodies which are founded on the very
explicit denial of doctrines which are the foundation and basis
of his own Church ? Is it true, as Romanists urge against us,
that these high claims exist only on paper, and are renounced in
our practice ; that when we are brought into actual contact with
the two bodies. Catholic and Protestant, our imposture is at
once detected, and we betray for which of the two we have most
affinity ? Is the hypocritical cry of the Exeter ' laity,' l our
common Protestantism,' to be substituted in the Creed for the
Article ' one Catholic and Apostolic Church ?'
For to take the much lower ground, that of ecclesiastical
discipline whatever we may consider to be the real position of
the Roman Catholic communion in this country, nothing is
more certain, nay, it is the only ground on which we can deny
their pretensions fare, than that in France the visible and legi-
timate representative of the Church, is that Communion and its
hierarchy. The establishment or non-establishment of the
Church can make no difference in this respect. What we claim
to be here, that they are there. But the very heterogeneous
assemblage of religionists, of every hue and shade of creed, who
make up the one million of French Protestants, correspond, not
with the English Church, but with the English Dissenter. Mr.
Trench is, we believe, a Parish Priest. When an Independent
preacher comes and takes up a position in his parish, and
endeavours to form a congregation, to draw away the parish-
ioners from the Church, and offers the people the pure Gospel,
instead of the formalities of the Establishment, is Mr. Trench in
the habit of encouraging his attempts, of sympathizing in his
aims, and wishing him God speed? still less of joining his
worship, of throwing open his church to him, or of taking his turn
in the other's conventicle ? Yet this man is but doing exactly
what Mr. Trench made a point of doing wherever he went;
holds precisely the same language about the Church of England
that Mr. Trench does about the Church of Rome ; and holds,
and preaches, the doctrines of free grace, and justification without
works, which Mr. Trench considers all-important; and, if he
went abroad, would (and might without any inconsistency) fra-
ternize with French Protestants of any description. Things
that agree with the same agree with one another. If the English
Independent or Presbyterian is one in heart and belief with the
French, and Mr. Trench is as much so when in France, whence
the impassable gulf between Mr. Trench and the Independent
at home ? Do they stand aloof from one another, on points of
form and ceremonial? And do thus men who are wont to speak
of form as so absolutely unimportant, move in diametrical Ly
Continental Travel. 75
opposed orbits over the same ground, because they differ in mere
rites and ceremonies?
What would be said, if one of those Clergymen, who take the
high sacramental view of the English Church, were, in travelling
in a Catholic country, not only to communicate openly with
Catholics, but, supposing such a thing possible, to say mass when-
ever he had an opportunity, according to the Roman missal?
Yet nothing is more certain than that, great as is the difference
between our Church's teaching and that of the Roman Church,
those differences are in details, and not in fundamentals ; while,
on the other hand, our difference with Protestants is one of
principle.
That we may not be thought to have overstated the degree
and nature of Mr. Trench's intercommunion with the Protes-
tants of France, we quote some instances.
At Tours
' There is at Tours a French-Protestant pastor and flock. The in-
crease of numbers professing the Reformed Faith has been very rapid ;
and it could not be otherwise than gratifying for an Englishman to hear,
that the establishment of Protestant worship in the place was due to a
countryman, the late lamented and beloved Mr. Hartley. Much bene-
ficial influence towards the promotion of the same cause is exercised at
Tours by M. and Madame Andre. Their Christian zeal and love is
widely known both in France and England ; and yet the remembrance
of the cordiality which we ever received at their hands, as well as of the
interesting meetings for Christian communion and charitable works, so
well ordered and maintained at their home, will not let me pass them
by without this testimony to their influence, character, and Graius-like
hospitality.' Trench, vol. i. p. 51.
At Saumur
' I had a note of introduction for the pastor, M. Duvivier, who received
us in a very friendly and obliging manner By his wish I had a
service in this interesting edifice for the few English who are at present
residing in the town and neighbourhood.' Ibid. p. 73.
At Angers
' We rose early this morning, to clear and prepare our apartment for
a temporary church ; got in about thirty chairs, and arranged all things
needful for our pure and simple form of worship. Thirty-five came.
Three or four of the number were French ; but, being Protestants, they
were desirous of this Christian union with us, and were able to understand
and follow a considerable portion of our service.' Trench, vol. i. p. 90.
But Mr. Trench did not confine himself to performing the
English service for English and French indifferently ; at
Nantes
' We attended this morning the French-Protestant service, held in a
76 Continental Travel.
large and convenient edifice, which was once the chapel of a Carmelite
monastery. There was a good congregation present, many of whom, as
I was informed, were English. The prayer was in a written form ; the
sermon extempore ; both excellent. Here, as usually abroad, it appears
to be the custom to sit while singing. The text was from Revelation
iii. 15, 16. The subject was, Lukewarmness in religion. M. Rosselet,
the French pastor, gave notice in his church, that I should have a service
for the English on the next Sunday afternoon.' Trencfi, vol. i. p. 147.
' M. R., the French-Protestant pastor, spent the evening with us,
and we had much enjoyment in the society of a brother minister so dis-
tinguished as he is for ability, and, at the same time, so simple in his
faith and character. At the time of our family worship, I gave him
the Bible, and asked him to read a portion, and make a few obser-
vations. He selected that grand and animating chapter, S. Peter i. 1.'
Ibid. p. 153.
At Bourbon- Vendee
' At twelve o'clock we went to the Mairie, where a comfortable, simple
apartment is assigned for public worship. We found a congregation
composed of about thirty persons.' Ibid. p. 170.
And, as a last instance, at Montauban
' To one who prizes the Reformation, and takes an interest in the
maintenance and advance of Protestantism, Montauban must be a place
of deep and lively interest. When it is known that this town contains
one of the two Theological Institutions for preparing young men for the
ministry of the Gospel in France, Montauban can scarcely be visited by
any friend of Divine truth without fervent wishes of prosperity to those
young servants of Christ, who are hence annually sent forth to fight the
battles of the Lord ; and that not with the many advantages possessed
by us at home as members of the Church established in our realm, but
iii much worldly weakness and isolation, and against a host of political
and priestly adversaries. And I am sure that none of our countrymen,
to whom the glory of God and the welfare of souls is dear, should visit,
or hear of, the place without the utterance of earnest prayer that the
Institution may receive a constant and plenteous blessing from the hands
of Almighty God I called on M. A. Monod, a professor in the Col-
lege As I entered his house, I heard the sound of hymns, and
understanding that the voices were those of some who had come early to
a meeting for prayer and praise, which was shortly to commence, I re-
turned for Mrs. T., and we thus had the privilege of an unexpected
service on our way. We found a full room, and many of the young
students were present. Scripture was read, two or three hymns were
sung, M. Monod prayed, and two others, called upon by him thus to
share in the service.' Ibid, p. 262.
Thus, then, the position and claims of the English Church are
such as to render this amalgamation with French Calvinists per-
fectly unjustifiable in any of her genuine members, much more
Continental Travel. 77
in one of her Priests ; and their doctrine and discipline is utterly
alien to the true spirit of our Church. And as, if we inquire on
grounds of history and right on the grounds, that is, on which
the Church of England bases her prescription here against the
English Eomanists we find that the Gallican Church has the
same rights and legitimacy in France that we claim in England ;
so, if we look to character, temper, and practice, we shall be
unable to deny that, in all these respects, that Church has the
strongest claims on our sympathy and affections. But that an
individual, or a society, possesses an inward spirit of religion is
what can never be proved in controversy ; at least, all such
attempted proof would be thrown away on those with whom
alone the fact, if proved, would have any weight. The glowing
accounts Romanists are so fond of giving of the spread of reli-
gious feeling in France, 1 may animate and encourage those
whose sympathy is already fully formed, but as proofs, they are
totally without weight. Outward acts are, at best, a fallacious
measure of inward devotion, and the attempt, so often made, to
take a comparative gauge of the amount of personal devotion
produced by Romanism and Protestantism respectively, is but
like the comic poet's proposal to determine the merits of the
rival tragedians by the scale and weights. These statistics of
religion are even more illusory than the statistics of morality.
And such a line of argument is especially open to the retort of
an adversary of a very mean order 
