The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851

In order to show himself superior to the assaults of his enemy, our Abbé would often endeavor to persuade himself that he was every whit as active as he had formerly been; more active even than he had been in his youth. On these occasions he would jump up from his easy-chair, where he had been sitting groaning under an attack of the asthma; he would cast his pillows on one side, his night-cap on the other, would pitch his slippers to the other end of the room, and call loudly for his domestics. In one of these deceitful triumphs of his will over his feeble constitution, he rang one cold winter's morning for his valet de chambre.

"My thick cloth trousers!" cried he, "my thick cloth trousers!"

"Why, Monsieur l'Abbé," timidly objected his faithful servitor, "what can you be thinking of? you were very bad yesterday evening."

"That's very probable; I have nothing to do with what I was yesterday evening. My thick cloth trousers, I tell you—now, my furred waistcoat! Come, look sharp!"

"But, Monsieur l'Abbé, why quit your warm room, your snug arm-chair? You are so pale."

"Pale, am I! that's better than ever, for I have been as yellow as a quince all my life! Good, I have my trousers and waistcoat; fetch me my redingote!"

"Your redingote! that you only put on when you are going out?"

"And it is precisely because I am going out that I ask for it. You argue to-day like a true stage valet. Why should I not put on my redingote? Are you afraid of it becoming shabby? Do you wish to steal it from me while it is new?"

"I am afraid that you will increase your cough if you don't keep the house to-day. It is very cold this morning."

"Very cold, is it, eh? so much the better. I like cold weather."

"It snows even very much, Monsieur l'Abbé."

"In that case, my large Polish boots."

"Your large Polish boots! And for what purpose?"

"Not to write a poem in, probably; for if Boileau very sensibly remarked, that in order to write a good poem time and taste were necessary, he did not add that boots were indispensable. Once for all, I want my Polish boots to go out shooting in. Is not that plain enough, Monsieur Mascarille?"

"Cough shooting, Monsieur l'Abbé?"

"Maraud! wolf-shooting—in the wood. Come, quick, my boots, and no chattering."

"Here are your boots, Monsieur l'Abbé. Truly you have no thought for your health."

"Have you a design upon my boots, also? Be so good, most discursive valet, as to fetch me my deer-skin gloves, my hat, and gun."

The Abbé de Voisenon was soon equipped with the aid of his valet, who, during the operation of dressing, never ceased repeating to him:

"It is fearfully cold this morning. Dogs have been found frozen to death in their kennels, fish dead in the fish-ponds, cattle dead in the stables, birds dead on the trees, and even wolves dead in the forest."

"My good friend," replied the Abbé de Voisenon, "you have said too much; your story of the wolves prevents me believing the rest: upon this I start. Now listen to me. On my return from shooting I expect to find my poultices ready, my asses-milk properly warmed, and my tisanes mixed; give directions about all this in the kitchen."

"Yes, Monsieur l'Abbé. He'll never return, that's certain," murmured the valet, as he packed up his master in his great-coat, and drew his fur cap well down over his ears.

Followed by three of his dogs, our abbé started on his shooting excursion. At the very first step he took on leaving the court-yard, he fell; but he was up in an instant, and brushed speedily along. It must have been a strange spectacle to see this old man, as black as a mute at a funeral, with his black gloves, black boots, black coat, all black in short, tripping gayly along over the snow with three dogs at his heels, sometimes whistling and shouting aloud, sometimes cracking his pocket-whip, and occasionally pointing his fowling-piece in the direction of a flight of crows.

He had passed through the village of Voisenon, and had just gained the open country, when he was stopped at the entrance of a lane of small cottages by a young girl, who, the instant she perceived him, cried out,

"Ah, monseigneur" (for many people styled him monseigneur), "it is surely Providence that has sent you to us!"

"What is the matter?" inquired the abbé.

"Our grandfather is dying, and he is unwilling to die without confession."

"But I have nothing to do with that, my child; that is the priest's business."

"But are you not a priest, monseigneur?"

"Almost," replied our abbé, rather taken aback by this home-thrust, and in a very bad humor besides at the interruption, "almost; but address yourself in preference to the prior of the convent. Run to the château, ring at the convent-gate; ring loudly, and reserve me for a better occasion."

"Monseigneur," repeated the girl, "our grandfather has not time to wait; he is dying—you must come."

"I tell you," replied the abbé, confused within himself at his refusal, "I cannot go. I am, as you see, out shooting: the thing is utterly impossible."

With these words he sought to pursue his way; but the young girl, who could not comprehend the bad arguments made use of by the abbé, clung obstinately to his coat skirts, and compelled him to turn round. Aroused by the noise of this altercation, a few of the male population appeared on the thresholds of their doors, others at their windows; and as a village resembles a bundle of dry hay, which a spark will set in a blaze, the wives joined their husbands, the children their mothers, and soon the entire population flocked into the street to see what was the matter.

The Abbé du Jard, seigneur of Voisenon, king of the country, felt deeply humiliated amid the crowd which surrounded him, and which had already begun to murmur at this refusal, as irreligious as it was inhuman.

But our poor abbé was not inhuman. The fact was, he had completely forgotten the formula used on such occasions; and if the truth must be told, as he was careless and indifferent in religious matters, rather than hypocritical, his conscience reproached him for going to absolve or condemn a fellow-creature when he inwardly felt how utterly unworthy he was himself of judging others at the tribunal of the confessional.

Necessity, however, prevailed over his just scruples; which scruples, however, be it said, could not be made use of as excuses to his vassals: so, with downcast eyes and his reversed fowling-piece under his arm, he permitted himself to be led to the cottage where lay the old man, who was unwilling to render his last sigh without having made the official avowal of his sins.

The villagers knelt in a circle before the door, whilst the abbé seated himself by the side of the dying man, in order the better to receive his confession.

Since the unlucky moment in which the Abbé de Voisenon had been balked of his morning's sport, he had lost—for he had at times his intervals of superstitious terror—the proud determination he had formed of not believing himself ill on that day. But then, what signs of evil augury had greeted him! He had tripped and fallen on leaving home; he had seen flocks of crows; a weeping girl had dragged him to the bedside of a terrified sinner—even now they were repeating the prayers for the dying around him. The Abbé de Voisenon was overcome; his former temerity oozed palpably away, he felt sick at heart, his ears tingled, his asthma groaned within his chest.

"I am ill," thought he. "I was in the wrong to come out; why did I not take my old servant's advice, and remain at home?"

Finally he lent an ear to the old man's confession.

"You were born the same day as myself!" exclaimed the abbé, at the patient's first confidential communication; "you were born the same day as myself!"

The old man continued, and here a new terror arose for our abbé.

"You have never heard mass to the end! And I," thought he, "have never heard even the beginning for these last thirty years!"

The penitent continued:—

"I have committed, monseigneur, the great sin that you know."

"The great sin that I know! I know so many," thought the abbé. "What sin, my friend?"

"Yea, the great sin—although married—"

"Ah! I understand!" Then, sotto voce, "My great sin, although a priest."

A deplorable fatality, if it was a fatality, had so willed it that the vassal should have fallen into the same snares as had his lord, who was now called to judge him at his last hour.

When the confession was ended, the Abbé de Voisenon consulted his own heart with inward terror, and after some hesitation he remitted his penitent's sins, inwardly avowing to himself that the dying man ought, at least, out of gratitude, to render him the same service.

The ceremony over, the abbé rose to depart: but his limbs failed him, and they were actually obliged to carry him home, where he arrived in a state of prostration that seriously alarmed his household. During the remainder of that day he spoke to no one; wrapped up in the silence of his own melancholy thoughts, he opened his lips only to cough. The night was bad; icy shiverings passed over his frame: the image of this man, of the same age, and burdened with the same sins as he himself had committed, would not leave his memory. By daylight his trouble of mind and body was at its height; he desired his valet to summon his physician and the prior of the convent. "And immediately," added he, "immediately."

Comprehending better this time the wishes of his master, the domestic hastened to arouse the prior, whose convent almost adjoined the château, and the physician, who had apartments in the château itself. This physician was a young man, chosen by the celebrated Tronchin from among his cleverest pupils at the express desire of the Abbé de Voisenon.

Seriously alarmed at the danger of the abbé, both prior and physician hastened to obey the summons. M. de Voisenon was so ill last night. Should they arrive in time? So equal and so prompt was their zeal that both reached the abbé's bedroom door together. But when they opened it, what was their astonishment to find that the bird had flown; our abbé had got over his little fright, and had gone out shooting again.

The end of that fatal eighteenth century was now approaching; undermined by years and debauchery, it was now like a ruined spend-thrift moving away from the calendar of the world in rags; it was hideously old, but its years inspired not respect. Old king, old ministers, old generals—if indeed there were generals,—old courtiers, old mistresses, old poets, old musicians, old opera dancers, broken down with ennui, pleasure, and idleness—toothless, faded, rouged, and wrinkled—were descending slowly to the tomb. Louis XV. formed one of the funeral procession; he was taken to St. Denis between two lines of cabarets filled with drunken revellers, madly rejoicing at being rid of this plague, which another plague had carried off to the grave. Crébillon was dead; the son of the great Racine, honored by the famous title of Member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, was taken off by a malignant fever, and obtained from the grateful publicity of the day the following necrological eulogium, as brief as it was eloquent: "M. Racine, last of the name, died yesterday of a malignant fever; as a man of letters he was long dead, having become stupefied by wine and devotion." Twelve days afterwards Marivaux followed Racine to the grave. The Abbé Prevost died of a tenth attack of apoplexy in the forest of Chantilly. In the following spring the celebrated Madame de Pompadour descended, at the age of forty-four, into the grave, after having exhaled a bon mot in guise of confession. Desirous, as it would appear, of leaving this world like the rest of his worthy compères, the composer Rameau cried furiously to his confessor, whose lugubrious note while intoning the service at his bedside offended the delicacy of his ear, 'What the devil are you muttering there, Monsieur le Curé? you are horribly out of tune!' And thereupon Master Rameau expired of a putrid fever. And what think you, worthy reader, occupied the public the day following the death of the most celebrated musician in Europe, the king of the French school? Why, nothing less than this wonderful piece of news: "Mademoiselle Miré, of the Opera, more celebrated as a courtesan than as a danseuse, has interred her lover; on his tomb are engraven these words:

MI RE LA MI LA."

A touching funeral oration, truly, for poor Rameau! Panard, the father of the French vaudeville, died some days after Rameau; and the Parisian public, with its national tenderness of heart, merely remarked, that "the words could not be separated from the accompaniment."

You see, reader, how the ranks were thinning, how all these old candles were expiring in their sockets, how the ball was approaching its end.

"Piron died yesterday," writes a journalist; and he adds, "They say he received the curé of St. Roche very badly." What an admirable piece of buffoonery! these curés going in turn to shrive the writers of the eighteenth century, and having flung at their heads epigrams composed for the occasion, perhaps, ten years before.

Louis XV. died soon after Piron. A few hours before his death he said to Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon: "Although the king is answerable to God alone for his conduct, you can say that he is sorry for having caused any scandal to his subjects, and that from henceforth he desires to live but for the support of faith and religion, and for the happiness of his people!"

Like Rameau, Piron, Helvetius, and Pompadour, this good little king Louis XV. must have his bon mot; he was sorry for having caused any scandal to his subjects, and at his last moment of existence would live from henceforth for the sole happiness of his people! "Can any thing be finer than this?"

Finally came the Abbé de Voisenon's turn. Witty to his last hour, when they brought home the leaden coffin, the exact form and dimensions of which he had himself arranged and ordered beforehand, he said to one of his domestics,—

"There is a great-coat, any how, that you will not be tempted to steal from me."

He died on the 22d of November, 1775, aged sixty-eight.

From the London Times

IRELAND IN THE LAST AGE

Recollections of Curran

If the work of Mr. Charles Phillips were a description of the Roman bar in the time of Hadrian, it would scarcely be more completely than at present the picture of a time and system entirely passed away; yet he professes to give us—and performs his promise—a somewhat gossipping and very amusing description of the Irish bar, and the great men belonging to it, very little more than half a century since. But we travel and change quickly in these days of steam and railroads; even Time himself appears now to have attached his travelling carriage to a locomotive, and in the space of one man's life performs a journey that in staid and ancient days would have occupied the years of many generations, and, as if in illustration of the fleeting nature of men and things and systems at this time, here we find a contemporary (at this moment hardly past the prime of life) giving us portraits, and relating anecdotes of men with whom he, in his youth, lived in intimate and professional relations, but who seem now as absolutely to belong to a bygone order of things, as if they had wrangled before the Dikasts of Athens, or pleaded before the Prætor at Rome. Mr. Phillips seems to feel this, and, as the gay days of his sanguine youth flit by his memory, the retrospect brings, as it will ever bring, melancholy, and even sadness, with it. Yielding himself up to the dominion of feeling, in place of keeping his reason predominant, he mourns over the past, as if, in comparison with the present, it were greatly more worthy. Forgetting that there is a change also in himself; that the capacity for enjoyment is largely diminished; that hope has been fulfilled, or is for ever frustrate; he tests the present by his own emotions, instead of weighing with philosophic indifference the relative merits of the system that he describes, and of that in which he lives. We are told—

"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view;"

but, when age comes upon us, we must turn and look back, if we desire to enjoy this pleasing hallucination.

But in what is the present of Ireland so different from the past, in which our fathers lived? And what do these repinings mean? What is the charm that has for ever faded? The answer to this question, if complete, would occupy a volume, for the composition of which that of Mr. Phillips might well serve in the character of une pièce historique, abounding, as it does, in apt and instructive illustration, and giving, by its aggregation of anecdotes and descriptions, a somewhat confused but still interesting and lively picture of a very curious and stirring period. There lies, indeed, at the bottom of this inquiry a question with which the practical statesman has now little reason to trouble himself, but which, nevertheless, to the speculative philosopher, cannot fail to be a subject of never-failing interest.

The great physical discoveries of modern times, by which the powers of nature are made to act in subservience to the use and comfort of mankind, steadily tend to one great political result, viz., the permanently uniting and knitting together of much larger numbers of men into one and the same community, and subjecting them to one and the same Government, and that Government one of law and not of force, than was ever known or possible during the early days of man's history. This result, as regards the peace of the world and all the material comforts of life, is highly favorable. Whether the same can be said, of the mental vigor and moral excellence of the human race is a question upon which men may speculate, but which time alone can satisfactorily answer.

The small, contentious, and active communities of Greece; the little, ill-governed, yet vigorous Republics of modern Italy, stand out in the history of mankind bright and illustrious beyond all hope of comparison; and, from the wondrous intellects that appeared among them, they have proved to all succeeding times a never-failing subject of admiration, envy, and despair. Just in proportion to our own advancement in art, literature, and science, is the intensity of our astonishment, of our envy, and of our despondency. We endeavor to compete with, but can never equal them; we imitate, but, like all imitators, we are condemned to mediocrity; it is only when we attempt to explore some new and untrod region of art or science that we can pretend to the dignity even of comparison. And these regions are rare indeed.

But, if we compare our own social condition with that of the Greeks or the Italians—if we look into their houses, their cities, and their fields,—if we acquire an accurate and vivid conception of the insecurity of life, of property, and of peace among them,—and if we measure the happiness of life by the comforts of every day existence, then, indeed, the superiority belongs to ourselves; and we may be led to ask, whether the advantages of both conditions of political and social existence may not be united; and to that end seek to learn what it was that brought out into such vigorous relief the wonderful mental activity of the two periods, which form such peculiar and hitherto unequalled epocha in the history of mankind. We shall find, if we pursue this inquiry into other times and among other people, that there was one circumstance, among many others indeed, of peculiar weight and importance, which then exercised and has never failed to exercise, wheresoever it has existed, a vast influence upon the mental and moral character of the people—we mean a feeling of intense nationality. This feeling is not all that is required; without it no great originality or vigor in a people is probable, and where it has been strongly manifest, it has generally led to great deeds, and much mental activity. The character of this manifestation will, indeed, greatly depend upon the natural character of the people—upon the peculiar state of their civilization, and upon their political condition. If these be all favorable, the spirit of nationality is divine, and manifest in great and ennobling deeds and thoughts; but, if adverse, then the spirit will be destructive, and vice will be quickened into fatal activity.

In Ireland, at the end of the eighteenth century, a remarkable series of events cherished, if it did not indeed produce, this sentiment of a separate nationality and independence. Conquerors and conquered, in spite of social and religious distinctions, had long since coalesced into one people; and the successful revolt of our American colonies, induced the people of Ireland to demand for themselves freedom and independence also. With arms in their hands the Volunteers wrung from England an independent Parliament in 1782; and in the eighteen years which followed, all that is really great in the history of Ireland, is comprised. The Volunteers, indeed, obtained independence, but that was all. The constitution of the Irish was, as before, narrow and mischievous, oppressive and corrupt; but it was Irish, and independent of the Parliament of England. And the struggles of an independent people, endeavoring, by their own efforts, to reform their own institutions, led to the rising of that brilliant galaxy of statesmen, orators, wits, and lawyers, to which Irishmen of the present day, almost without exception, refer with grief and despondency, not unmixed with indignation, when wishing to make the world appreciate the evils their country has suffered in consequence of its union with England. But, unhappily, the great spirit of freedom was awakened in evil times. Great, vigorous, and almost glorious was this wonderful manifestation of its power; but eventually the horrible corruption and vice of the period bore all before it, and extinguished every chance of benefit from the acquisition of independence. Great men appeared, but they were powerless. Of the remarkable period in which they lived, however, every memorial is of interest. With the society of which they formed a part, so different from our own—with the character and manners of the men themselves, their history, their good sayings and wild deeds, every student of history wishes to become acquainted, and seizes with avidity upon every piece of evidence from which authentic information respecting them may be gathered—and, as a portion of this evidence, the work of Mr. Phillips deserves consideration.

Among the most remarkable of the many distinguished characters of this stirring period was John Philpot Curran,—among Irish advocates, as was Erskine among those of England, facile princeps. With him, when on the bench as Master of the Rolls in Ireland, Mr. Phillips, himself then a junior at the Irish bar, became acquainted. Acquaintance became intimacy, and intimacy led to friendship, which lasted without interruption to the day of Curran's death. Admiration and affection induced Mr. Phillips to gather together memorials of his deceased friend, round whose portrait he has grouped sketches of many of his celebrated cotemporaries. He says in his preface—

"My object has been, touching as lightly as possible on the politics of the time, to give merely personal sketches of the characters as they appeared upon the scene to me. Many of them were my acquaintances—some of them my intimates; and the aim throughout has been a verisimilitude in the portraiture;—in short, to make the reader as familiar with the originals as I was myself."

And a more curious collection of likenesses was never crowded into one canvas. They all, indeed, have a strong family resemblance, but certainly they are like nothing else in nature; and to us, living in grave, and possibly dull and prosaic England—and in this our matter of fact and decorous age—the doings of the society which they have made illustrious, appear more like a mad saturnalia than the sober and commonplace procedure of rational men. The whole people—every class, profession, and degree—seemed to consider life but a species of delirious dance, and a wild and frantic excitement the one sole pleasure. Repose, thoughtfulness, and calm, they must have considered a premature death. Every emotion was sought for in its extreme, and a rapid variation from merriment to misery, from impassioned love to violent hate, was the ordinary (if in such an existence any thing could be deemed ordinary)—the common and ordinary condition of life. Laughter, that was ever on the brink of tears—a wild joy, that might in an instant be followed by hopeless despondency—alternations from sanguine and eager hope to blank and apparently crushing despair,—such was Irish life, in which every one appeared to be acting a part, and striving to appear original by means of a strained and laborious affectation. Steady, continued, and rational industry, was either unknown or despised; economy was looked upon as meanness—thrift was called avarice—and the paying a just debt, except upon compulsion, was deemed conduct wholly unworthy of a gentleman. Take the account Mr. Phillips himself gives. He speaks of the Irish squire; but the Irish squire was the raw material out of which so-called Irish gentlemen were made. "The Irish squire of half a century ago scorned not to be in debt; it would be beneath his dignity to live within his income; and next to not incurring a debt, the greatest degradation would have been voluntarily to pay one." And yet was there great pretension to honor, but a man of honor of those days would in our time be considered a ruffian certainly, and probably a blackleg or a swindler. "It was a favorite boast of his (the first Lord Norbury) that he began life with fifty pounds, and a pair of hair-trigger pistols." "They served his purpose well.... The luck of the hair-triggers triumphed, and Toler not only became Chief Justice, but the founder of two peerages, and the testator of an enormous fortune. After his promotion, the code of honor became, as it were, engrafted on that of the Common Pleas; the noble chief not unfrequently announcing that he considered himself a judge only while he wore his robes." The sort of law dispensed by this fire-eating judge might be easily conceived even without the aid of such an anecdote as the following: "A nonsuit was never heard of in his time. Ill-natured people said it was to draw suitors to his court." Toler's reason for it was that he was too constitutional to interfere with a jury, Be that as it may, a nonsuit was a nonentity, 'I hope, my Lord,' said counsel in a case actually commanding one, 'your Lordship will, for once, have the courage to nonsuit? In a moment the hair-triggers were uppermost. 'Courage! I tell you what, Mr. Wallace, there are two sorts of courage—courage to shoot, and courage to nonshoot—and I have both; but nonshoot now I certainly will not; and argument is only a waste of time.' "I remember well," says Mr. Phillips, when speaking of another judge, Mr. Justice Fletcher, "at the Sligo summer assizes for 1812, being counsel in the case of 'The King v. Fenton,' for the murder of Major Hillas in a duel, when old Judge Fletcher thus capped his summing up to the jury: 'Gentlemen, it's my business to lay down the law to you, and I will. The law says, the killing a man in a duel is murder, and I am bound to tell you it is murder; therefore, in the discharge of my duty, I tell you so; but I tell you at the same time, a fairer duel than this I never heard of in the whole coorse of my life.' It is scarcely necessary to add that there was an immediate acquittal." By way of giving some idea of the character of society then, the following enumeration is supplied by the memory of Mr. Phillips:—