himself. "As for his character, he had none; he was without enlightenment or knowledge of any kind, radically incapable of acquiring any; very idle, without imagination or productiveness; without taste, without choice, without discernment; neither seeing the weariness he caused others, nor that he was as a ball moving at haphazard by the impulsion of others; obstinate and little to excess in everything; amazingly credulous and accessible to prejudice, keeping himself, always, in the most pernicious hands, yet incapable of seeing his position or of changing it; absorbed in his fat and his ignorance, so that without any desire to do ill he would have made a pernicious king."

The other is the King's father-confessor, Père le Tellier, who "was chosen as successor of Père de la Chaise, and a terrible successor he made. Harsh, exact, laborious, enemy of all dissipation, of all amusement, of all society; incapable of associating even with his colleagues, he demanded no leniency for himself and accorded none to others. His brain and his health were of iron: his conduct was so also; his nature was savage and cruel. He was profoundly false, deceitful, hidden under a thousand folds; and when he could show himself and make himself feared, he yielded nothing, laughed at the most express promises when he no longer cared to keep to them, and pursued with fury those who had trusted to them. He was the terror even of the Jesuits, and was so violent to them that they scarcely dared approach him." Saint Simon's sketch of the Father's physiognomy we have already given.

senism an

So ruthless an anti-Jansenist as Le Tellier could hope for scanty ruth from the philo-Jansenist Duke. Saint Simon somewhere defines Jan"ideal heresy," invented by the Jesuits solely for the purpose of weakening the adversaries of Molina. To oppose Molina's doctrine was to be a Jansenist. That in substance, says the Duke, was what was meant by Jansenism. In which sense the Duke himself was one of these ideal heretics. His narrative of the proceedings taken against Port

Rarely, perhaps, did his feelings approach nearer to bitter disdain of the Grand Monarque himself, than when Louis, by word or deed, sought to "put down," snub, scarify, or stifle, the cause or the disciples of Jansenism. Here is a pertinent illustration, highly characteristic of all parties:

"When M. d'Orléans [the future Regent] was about to start for Spain, he named the officers who were to be of his suite. Amongst others was Fontpertius. At that name the King put on a serious look.

"What! my nephew,' he said. Fontpertius! the son of a Jansenist-of that silly woman who ran everywhere after M. Arnauld! I do not wish that man to go with you.'

66 6

By my faith, sire,' replied the Duc d'Orléans, I know not what the mother has done; but as for the son, he is far enough from being a Jansenist, I'll answer for it; for he does not believe in God.'

"Is it possible, my nephew?' said the King, softening. "Nothing more certain, sire, I assure you.'

"Well, since it is so,' said the King, 'there is no harm: you can take him with you.'

"This scene for it can be called by no other name-took place in the morning. After dinner M. d'Orléans repeated it to me, bursting with laughter, word for word, just as I have written it. When we had both well laughed at this, we admired the profound instruction of a discreet and religious King, who considered it better not to believe in God than to be a Jansenist, and who thought there was less danger to his nephew from the impiety of an unbeliever, than from the doctrines of a sectarian. M. d'Orléans could not contain himself while he told the story, and never spoke of it without laughing until the tears came into his eyes.

Royal is warmly toned with indignation against the oppressor, and sympathy with the oppressed.

66

Noway inferior to his talent for personal portraiture of a particular kind, is Saint Simon's skill in the construction, or rather the grouping and presentment, of dramatic tableaux vivants, taken from life, from the acted history of his own time, played out under his own eye, or detailed to him by actual witnesses, whom, we may be sure, he examined and cross-examined with all the tact and urgency of a lynx-eyed inquisitor. As examples of this graphic art in depicting a "situation," managing a crisis, and getting up a scene, we may refer to his narrative of the sudden illness and death of Monsieur, the King's brother-the hubbub and disorder there was that night at Marly, the horror at St. Cloud, that palace of delights-the courtiers jostling one another-the King weeping "a good deal"-Monsieur dying, stretched on a couch in his cabinet, exposed to the scullions and grooms of the household, whilst the women who were at St. Cloud, and who lost their consideration and their amusement, ran hither and thither, crying, with dishevelled hair, like bacchantes. Or to the account of Louis at the carp basin, receiving intelligence that the Duchesse de Bourgogne, then enceinte, was hurt;"-or that of the behaviour of Louis and Madame de Maintenon in her sedanchair, at the sham siege of Compiègne;-or, most striking and memorable of all, the elaborate description of Monseigneur's decease, with all that preceded, accompanied, and ensued upon it, in the shape of court intrigue, court excitement, court suspense, court hopes and fears, court hypocrisy, and court heartlessness. The blundering, obstinacy, and dissension of the doctors-the King supping tranquilly while they were losing their wits, and "pouring down physic on physic, without leaving time for any to work"-then the abrupt intimation to the King that all was lost the confusion of high and low-the rush to the new heirapparent the constrained groans and sighs of the valets, "grieving for the master they had lost as well as for the master that had succeeded"— the real sobs of the discomfited cabal, and the crocodile tears of the triumphant-nothing is overlooked, nothing modified or softened, for indeed in his portrayal of such scenes we may say of Saint Simon that he Nothing extenuates, but sets down all in malice.

In this last instance, the candour with which he avows his pleasure at the death of Monseigneur, because it came at the nick of time to save him from an impending scrape, is curious enough. When there seemed a prospect of the sick man's recovery, he and the Duchesse d'Orléans condoled with each other in a beautiful spirit: "To speak frankly, and to our shame, she and I lamented together to see Monseigneur, in spite of his age and his fat, escape from so dangerous an illness. She reflected seriously but wittily, that after an illness of this sort [small-pox], apoplexy [upon which their charitable hopes had been founded] was not

It ran all through the Court and all over the town, and the marvellous thing was, that the King was not angry at this. It was a testimony of his attachment to the good doctrine which withdrew him further and further from Jansenism. The majority of people laughed with all their heart. Others, more wise, felt rather disposed to weep than to laugh, in considering to what excess of blindness the King had reached."—(II. 147-8.)

to be looked for; that an attack of indigestion was equally unlikely to arise, considering the care Monseigneur had taken not to overgorge himself since his recent danger; and we concluded more than dolefully, that henceforth we must make up our minds that the Prince would live and reign for a long time." But Monseigneur died. He was, or might become, a thorn in the side of Saint Simon. It made the Duke wince. "This thorn in my side was cruelly sharp." But relief came. "At the moment the most unlooked for it pleased God to deliver me from it." The Duke is full of thanksgiving for Heaven's special interposition, for a particular providence, vouchsafed in his behalf at so critical a juncture. He joins the mourners (by courtesy, and as courtiers), and is saddened for a moment by what? By the thought, hear him, "that I myself should find myself some day at the gates of death." But this is transitory; and he continues: "Joy, nevertheless, found its way through the momentary reflections of religion and of humanity, by which I tried to master myself." And he adds-for Monseigneur was not yet a dead man, but only in articulo mortis or thereabouts, "And with these thoughts I felt, in spite of myself, a lingering fear lest the dead man should recover, and was extremely ashamed of it."

It is at this turning-point in the reign of Louis that the present instalment of Mr. St. John's translation comes to an end. Two volumes, forming a second series, are to follow, the subject of which will be the last days of the old King, and the state of France under the Regency of his able and adroit but profligate nephew.

THE ADVENTURES OF A ROVING DIPLOMATIST.*

THE "Adventures of Roderick Random and Strap the Barber" were written pretty much in the strain of the usual run of similar works of fiction in their time, a little vein of caricature running through all. In the present volume the adventures are the random portion, and we take it the hero reflects his exact nature-a photographic portrait-not a fold of his dress-waistcoat omitted, not a straggling curl of his diplomatic locks but is exactly portrayed. His sayings and doings remind us of Kite's hussar, who could "eat a ravelin for his breakfast, and pick his teeth with a palisado." He has but to say " Presto, fly, Jack, and begone!" and the French press falls flat before him, as the walls of Jericho fell before the ram's horns of the Jewish cohorts. His magic power, bent on mightiest labours, changed the antipathies of the Siècle into the most rapturous affection for perfide Albion, subduing into the softest and most soothing language those fierce political diatribes which had before come across the Channel with an aspect which threatened England to its deepest foundation in the abysses of the ocean.

It was a

* The Adventures of a Roving Diplomatist. By Henry Wikof. New York.

1857.

gigantic task to master the "Age" in this way, and lay England under such a heavy obligation to a scion of her American descendants. M. Lamarche, of the Siècle, softened under Mr. Wikof as the rocks of the Alps melted under the vinegar of Hannibal. Like Alexander and all great conquerors, Mr. Wikof then aspired to new victories. He determined to bring La Presse to obedience. The subjugation of this adversary must have been more formidable still than the envious Siècle. How shall we designate that soaring spirit which, not content with its triumph over the "Age," would fain lead captive the "Press." M. de Girardin listened to the soft impeachment as a lady half tempted to be frail listens to a captivating lover, hesitates, and is undone. Just so it was with M. de Girardin. At first mille et mille raisons stood in his way. The power of Mr. Wikof's eloquence changed Lord Palmerston's rough treatment of France into the most agreeable cordiality as far as related to the misconstrued conduct of the noble lord. M. de Girardin, who, with his brother editors, had "fretted like gummed velvet" at the name of the foreign secretary of England, now "took up the cudgels in his behalf." The "Age" and the "Press" subdued (Le Siècle et La Presse), Mr. Wikof determined to go on conquering and to conquer. Having been so far victorious, he resolved, in the spirit of him of whom it was said, "Give him all England and he would ask Ireland for a potato-garden," to bring M. Achard, of the Assemblée Nationale, to his feet, a writer who, in his Anglophobian hostilities, had not spared even the cut of Lord Normanby's coat- "think of that, Master Brook !" He, too, fell by degrees before Mr. Wikof, who set all the Parisian press quite right about our foreign secretary, and wrote a matchless dialogue of a conversation between himself and Lord Palmerston in the way of Landor. It was to be anonymously published, and inserted in nearly all the Paris journals and those of the vicinity. It was cautious, from all accounts, faithful, and overpowering, but his diplomatic surveillant, his evil genius, Mr. Edwardes, pooh-poohed it, as absurd and irrelevant. The glorious results he anticipated were clipped in the bud, while the hero of his own tale, after such achievements, was recommended to correspond directly with the Foreign Office. But we have commenced somewhat irregularly.

Mr. Henry Wikof is by birth an American, and by profession a "wandering diplomatist." He became known in Paris about 1850 to a gentleman attached to the British embassy named Edwardes, who discovered something in him, "when caught young," as Johnson said of Scotchmen, that omened well for a life amidst the concoction of protocols and the deciphering of despatches. He gave him an introduction to Lord Palmerston, by whom he was well received, and invited to meet the noble lord at Broadlands. The reception was courteous as that which an Englishman of distinction could not fail to give. We learn, too, that Mr. Wikof could not ride a few miles with Lord Palmerston from a dread of sundry bruises, and that his lordship sent away his own horse in kind consideration for the "wanderer," together with the horse he had ordered for his accommodation, which Mr. Wikof mistook for a Bucephalus, he being no equestrian son of Philip. Mr. Wikof had witnessed the political struggles of 1848 in France, and was well known to the President Louis Napoleon, whom he visited. He seems to have had an acquaintance with many of the leading characters who figured in the extraordinary events which

occurred at that epoch, and this it was, no doubt, which struck Mr. Edwardes with an idea that Mr. Wikof might be useful to the British foreign department. He was soon afterwards enrolled among the employés in that department, having had a second interview with Lord Palmerston at Broadlands, where his lordship happened to be at the moment. There he presented his lordship with a document drawn up in relation to France, entitled "La France, que veut-elle ?" He is then referred to Mr. Addington, the under-secretary of state, as to his duties, and proceeded again to Paris, full of the idea that he ha dnot only a mission to fulfil there in the British diplomatic service, but that he was competent at the same time to render England and America considerable service by the superiority of his abilities and his knowledge, beyond that of English officials, of the best policy to be pursued to keep the two nations in harmony. At the same time Mr. Wikof was determined, like a good American citizen, to do nothing to prejudice his country. In this respect never was Roman patriotism in later days preserved more unblemished than throughout his narration.

After Mr. Wikof returned from London to Paris, his first essay was made to subjugate the French press, which was then virulent on the subject of England. We have shown his own account of his successes in this way. Nothing could be more conclusive of his talents on his own representation of things, and his rescue of Lord Palmerston from the continued attacks of those who wholly misunderstood his lordship's character and policy. Such a champion must have been invaluable to the British foreign secretary, after he realised the veni, vidi, vici of antiquity with a celerity no doubt quite astounding at the Foreign Office. Gallic ideas changing their side so satisfactorily, in other words, France being politically subdued by Mr. Wikof, he turned to his native land in order to reconcile the two countries by means of his own patriotic views and superior knowledge of the interests of both. This rendered any instructions useless, even from the foreign secretary, so lofty was Mr. Wikof's consciousness of his own powers. How he subdued the press of France, his cogent arguments, his particular logic, and his ultimate triumph, which he seems to have thought must have laid Lord Palmerston under heavy obligations, he fully details. To us it seems marvellous that what he details effected such wonders, unless some latent influence, some supernatural charm, were secretly acting at the same time upon the spirit of the French journals. We cannot see how else the wondrous change thus effected could have been brought about. The French papers averred that Lord Palmerston "travaille toujours et partout contre la France," and with such feelings on the part of their journalists the potent reasoning and prevailing eloquence of Mr. Wikof worked a change equal to that of making them eat their own words, thus surpassing in his labours the most renowned necromancers, who never pretended to make people devour invisibilities. There are various episodes in our author to show how much the writer was acquainted with French society. Thiers comes in for his share of the "Roving Diplomatist's" censures, for the press of Paris could not have been bridled without a reference to those connected with it. It is true the world may chance. to think the better of the little diatribist Thiers for Mr. Wikof's calumniation, which is unfortunate..

In the midst of his services and his handling the reputations of others