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

Marie Antoinette is treated almost as badly as by Mr. Geffeson, who thought her a devil, far less tenderly than we should have expected. Her "amours" are spoken of, though with the limitation that "they were not numerous, scandalous, or degrading." We gather that Talleyrand believed her to have been guilty in a special instance named, and that Madame Champan had confessed it to him. At the same time her person is not very flatteringly described.

"As I was not presented at Court, I never saw the Queen but at the play-house. She was then in affliction, and her countenance was, no doubt, disfigured by long suffering and resentment. I should not, however, suppose that the habitual expression of it, even in happier seasons, had ever been very agreeable. Her beauty, however extolled, consisted, I suspect, exclusively in a fair skin, a straight person, and a stately air, which her admirers termed dignity, and her enemies pride and disdain. Her total want of judgment and temper no doubt contributed to the disasters of the Royal Family, but there was no member of it to whom the public was uniformly so harsh and unjust, and her trial and death were among the most revolting parts of the whole catastrophe. She was indeed insensible when led to the scaffold; but the previous persecution which she underwent was base, unmanly, cruel, and ungenerous to the last degree."

On the other hand, a better case is made out for Egalité than any writer has yet been bold enough, or informed enough, to attempt. His false position with the Court is shown not to have been of his own seeking, and to have ultimately driven him reluctantly into the ranks of the extreme party. His courage is vindicated successfully, his sincerity and truthfulness less so. Lord Holland retained his regard for the Orleans family to the close of his life. He was one of the warmest defenders of the late King of the French. There are some capital notices of Tallyrand.

"It was in this visit to Paris in 1791, that I first formed acquaintance with M. Talleyrand. I have seen him in most of his vicissitudes of fortune; from his conversation I have derived much of the little knowledge I possess of the leading characters in France before and during the Revolution. He was then still a bishop. He had, I believe, been originally forced into holy orders, in consequence of his lameness, by his family, who, on that account, treated him with an indifference and unkindness shameful and shocking. He was for some time aumonier to his uncle, the Archbishop of Rheims; and when Mr. Pitt went to that town to learn French, after the peace of 1782, he lodged him in an apartment in the abbey of St. Thierry, where he was then residing with his uncle, and constantly accompanied him for six weeks, a circumstance to which, as I have heard M. Talleyrand remark with some asperity, Mr. Pitt never had the grace to allude either during his embassy, or his emigration, or in 1794, when he refused to recall the cruel order by which he was sent away from England under the alien bill. Talleyrand was initiated into public affairs under M. de Calonne, and learnt from that lively minister the happy facility of transacting business without effort and without ceremony in the corner of a drawing-room, or in the recess of a window."

Again—of Talleyrand's bon-mots. The bit at Chateaubriand is one of the happiest we can remember.

"'Il faut avoir aimé Mme. de Staël pour connaitre tout le bonheur d'aimer une bête,' was a saying of his much quoted at Paris at that time, in explanation of his passion for Mme. Grand, who certainly did not win him or any one else by the fascination of her wit or conversation. For thirty or forty years, the bon-mots of M. de Talleyrand were more frequently repeated and more generally admired than those of any living man. The reason was obvious. Few men uttered so many, and yet fewer any equally good. By a happy combination of neatness in language and ease and suavity of manner, with archness and sagacity of thought, his sarcasms assumed a garb at once so courtly and so careless, that they often diverted almost as much as they could mortify even their immediate objects. His humorous reproof to a gentleman vaunting with self-complacency the extreme beauty of his mother, and apparently implying that it might account for advantages in person in her descendants, is well known: 'Cétait donc,' said he, 'Monsieur votre père qui n'était pas si bien.' The following is more recent, but the humor of it hardly less arch or less refined. The celebrity of M. de Chateaubriand, the vainest of mortals, was on the wane. About the same time, it happened to be casually mentioned in conversation that Chateaubriand was affected with deafness, and complained bitterly of that infirmity. 'Je compends,' said Talleyrand; 'dequis qu'on a cessé de parler de lui, il se croit sourd.'"

We find a long portrait gallery of ministers, and princes, and princesses, one more imbecile, ignorant, and corrupt than another. One minister did not know the difference between Russia and Prussia; another always wrote Asiatic for Henseatic, and thought his correction necessary. Much light is thrown on the first quarrel between Ferdinand and his father; and the narrow escape of the Duke of Infantado is well told. Godoy, like all who had the honor of Lord Holland's acquaintance, was in some degree a favorite of his, his good qualities being brought out to neutralize his many bad ones. Jovellanos and Arguelles appear the only honest characters in the midst of such a mass of vice, and even they were pedantic, impracticable, and prejudiced. No history, narrative, or memoir can be so disgusting as those of Spain and its court under the dominion of the House of Bourbon. The imagination of no novelist has ever attained that acmè of duplicity, cruelty, villany, and cowardice, which made up the character of Ferdinand. The general opinion of Prince Metternich, since he has become familiar to London circles, has been rather to diminish former opinion of his superior wisdom. Lord Holland's early opinion of the prince is thus recorded:

"He seems hardly qualified by any superior genius to assume the ascendency in the councils of his own and neighboring nations, which common rumor has for some years attributed to him. He appeared to me, in the short intercourse I had with him, little superior to the common run of continental politicians and courtiers, and clearly inferior to the Emperor of Russia in those qualities which secure an influence in great affairs. Some who admit the degrading but too prevalent opinion that a disregard to truth is useful and necessary in the government of mankind, have on that score maintained the contrary proposition. His manners are reckoned insinuating. In my slight acquaintance with him in London I was not struck with them; they seemed such as might have been expected from a German who had studied French vivacity in the fashionable novels of the day. I saw little of a sagacious and observant statesman, or of a courtier accustomed to very refined and enlightened society."

But the statesman who sustained Austria and procured for it the alliance of France was not Metternich. Napoleon is known to have long wavered as to whether he would build his European system on a close alliance with Prussia or with Austria. Bignon we believe it is that gives the reasons in the imperial mind for and against. Prussia was the preferable ally, being a new country, untrammelled by aristocratic ideas, ambitious, military, and eager for domination. But Napoleon had humiliated Prussia too deeply to be forgiven. And then Napoleon had in those around him politicians who revered Austria for its antiquity and prestige, and who, like Lord Aberdeen, made the Cæsar of Vienna the pivot on which their ideas of policy turned. Talleyrand was one of them. He worshipped Austria, opposed all his master's plans for crushing her, and even dared to thwart those plans by revealing them to Alexander, and prompting him secretly to oppose them. Such treachery fully warrants all the suspicion and harshness with which Napoleon treated Talleyrand. The latter's conduct is fully revealed in this volume by Lord Holland. In fact, the way in which Napoleon found his policy most seriously counteracted, and his projects foiled, was his weakness in employing the men of the ancien regime, the nobles, whom he preferred for their pleasing and good manners, but who invariably betrayed the parvenu master, who employed and courted them. By an instance of this grievously misplaced confidence Napoleon lost his throne. In the last events and negotiations of 1814 Napoleon employed Caulaincourt, who, had he had full power, might have made an arrangement. Talleyrand and his party at the same time employed M. de Vitrolles, and sent him to the Emperor of Austria to learn on what terms he would be induced either to support Napoleon or abandon him. The Emperor of Austria was naturally most unwilling to proceed to the latter extreme. But M. Vitrolles, a secret agent of the Bourbons, so falsified and misrepresented everything to the Emperor that the sacrifice of Napoleon was assented to.

Our last extract relates some traits of the great Napoleon which seem more than ordinarily worth his nephew's attention just now. They are taken from a somewhat elaborate character of the Emperor which occupies nearly a third of the volume.

"Nothing could exceed the order and regularity with which his household both as Consul and Emperor was conducted. The great things he accomplished, and the savings he made, without even the imputation of avarice or meanness, with the sum comparatively inconsiderable of fifteen millions of francs a year, are marvellous, and expose his successors, and indeed all European Princes, to the reproach of negligence or incapacity. In this branch of his government he owed much to Duroc. It is said that they often visited the markets of Paris (les halles) dressed in plain clothes and early in the morning. When any great accounts were to be submitted to the Emperor, Duroc would apprize him in secret of some of the minutest details. By an adroit allusion to them or a careless remark on the points upon which he had received such recent and accurate information, Napoleon contrived to impress his audience with a notion that the master's eye was every where. For instance, when the Tuileries were furnished, the upholsterer's charges though not very exorbitant, were suspected by the Emperor to be higher than the usual profit of that trade would have warranted. He suddenly asked some minister who was with him how much the egg at the end of the bell-rope should cost? 'J'ignore,' was the answer.—'Eh bien! nous verrons,' said he, and then cut off the ivory handle, called for a valet, and bidding him dress himself in plain and ordinary clothes, and neither divulge his immediate commission or general employment to any living soul, directed him to inquire the price of such articles at several shops in Paris, and to order a dozen as for himself. They were one-third less dear than those furnished to the palace. The Emperor, inferring that the same advantage had been taken in the other articles, struck a third off the whole charge, and directed the tradesman to be informed that it was done at his express command, because on inspection he had himself discovered the charges to be by one-third too exorbitant. When afterwards in the height of his glory he visited Caen with the Empress Maria Louisa, and a train of crowned heads and princes, his old friend, M. Mechin, the Prefect, aware of his taste for detail, waited upon him with five statistical tables of the expenditure, revenue, prices, produce, and commerce of the departments. 'C'est bon,' said he, when he received them the evening of his arrival, 'vous et moi nous ferous bien de l'esprit sur tout cela demain au Conseil.' Accordingly, he astonished all the leading proprietors of the department at the meeting next day, by his minute knowledge of the prices of good and bad cyder, and of the produce and other circumstances of the various districts of the department. Even the Royalist gentry were impressed with a respect for his person, which gratitude for the restitution of their lands had failed to inspire, and which, it must be acknowledged, the first faint hope of vengeance against their enemies entirely obliterated in almost every member of that intolerant faction. Other princes have shown an equal fondness for minute details with Napoleon, but here is the difference. The use they made of their knowledge was to torment their inferiors and weary their company: the purpose to which Napoleon applied it was to confine the expanses of the State to the objects and interests of the community."

Lord Holland dwells at some length on the treatment to which Napoleon was subjected by the English Government, and on the generous attempts of Lady Holland to alleviate his captivity. This part of the volume has much present interest, and will be read with great eagerness by all. Of the Emperor's temper, he says:

"Napoleon, even in the plenitude of his power, seldom gratified his revenge by resorting to any act either illegal or unjust, though he frequently indulged his ill-humor by speaking both of and to those who had displeased him in a manner mortifying to their feelings and their pride. The instances of his love of vengeance are very few: they are generally of an insolent rather than a sanguinary character, more discreditable to his head than his heart, and a proof of his want of manners, taste, and possibly feeling, but not of a dye to affect his humanity. Of what man, possessed of such extended yet such disputed authority, can so much be said? Of Washington? Of Cromwell? But Washington, if he had ever equal provocation and motives for revenge, certainly never possessed such power to gratify it. His glory, greater in truth than that of Cæsar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte, was that he never aspired: but he disdained such power; he never had it, and cannot therefore deserve immoderate praise for not exerting what he did not possess. In the affair of General Lee, he did not, if I recollect, show much inclination to forgive. Even Cromwell did not possess the power of revenge to the same extent as Napoleon. There is reason, however, to infer from his moderation and forbearance that he would have used it as sparingly. But Cromwell is less irreproachable, on the score of another vice, viz., ingratitude. Napoleon not only never forgot a favor, but, unlike most ambitious characters, never allowed subsequent injuries to cancel his recollection of services. He was uniformly indulgent to the faults of those whom he had once distinguished. He saw them, he sometimes exposed and rectified, but he never punished or revenged them. Many have blamed him for this on the score of policy; but if it was not sense and calculation, it should be ascribed to good-nature. None, I presume, will impute it to weakness or want of discernment."

This account of Napoleon's ideas on religion is curious, and we think new.

"Whatever were the religious sentiments of this extraordinary man, such companions were likely neither to fix nor to shake, to sway nor to alter them. I have been at some pains to ascertain the little that can be known of his thoughts on such subjects, and, though it is not very satisfactory, it appears to me worth recording.

"In the early periods of the Revolution, he, in common with many of his countrymen, conformed to the fashion of treating all such matters, both in conversation and action, with levity and even derision. In his subsequent career, like most men exposed to wonderful vicissitudes, he professed, half in jest and half in earnest, a sort of confidence in fatalism and predestination. But on some solemn public occasions, and yet more in private and sober discussion, he not only gravely disclaimed and reproved infidelity, but both by actions and words implied his conviction that a conversion to religious enthusiasm might befal himself, or any other man. He had more than tolerance—he had indulgence and respect for extravagant and ascetic notions of religious duty. He grounded that feeling not on their soundness or their truth, but on the uncertainty of what our minds may be reserved for, on the possibility of our being prevailed upon to admit and even to devote ourselves to tenets which at first excite our derision. It has been observed that there was a tincture of Italian superstition in his character; a sort of conviction from reason that the doctrines of revelation were not true, and yet a persuasion, or at least an apprehension, that he might live to think them so. He was satisfied that the seeds of belief were deeply sown in the human heart. It was on that principle that he permitted and justified, though he did not dare to authorize, the revival of La Trappe and other austere orders. He contended that they might operate as a safety-valve for the fanatical and visionary ferment which would otherwise burst forth and disturb society. In his remarks on the death of Duroc, and in the reasons he alleged against suicide, both in calm and speculative discussion and in moments of strong emotion, (such as occurred at Fontainbleau in 1814,) he implied a belief both in fatality and Providence.

"In the programme of his coronation, a part of the ceremony was to consist in his taking the communion. But when the plan was submitted to him, he, to the surprise of those who had drawn it, was absolutely indignant at the suggestion. 'No man,' he said, 'had the means of knowing, or had the right to say, when or where he would take the sacrament, or whether he would or not.' On this occasion, he added, that he would not; nor did he.

"There is some mystery about his conduct in similar respects at St. Helena, and during the last days of his life. He certainly had mass celebrated in his chapel while he was well, and in his bedroom when ill. But though I have reason to believe that the last sacraments were actually administered to him privately a few days before his death, and probably after confession, yet Count Montholon, from whom I derive indirectly my information, also stated that he received Napoleon's earnest and distinct directions to conceal all the preliminary preparations for that melancholy ceremony from all his other companions, and even to enjoin the priest, if questioned, to say he acted by Count Montholon's orders, but had no knowledge of the Emperor's wishes.

"It seems as if he had some desire for such assurance as the Church could give, but yet was ashamed to own it. He knew that some at St. Helena, and more in France, would deem his recourse to such consolation infirmity; perhaps he deemed it so himself. Religion may sing her triumph, philosophy exclaim 'pauvre humanite,' more impartial scepticism despair of discovering the motive, but truth and history must, I believe, acknowledge the fact."

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

By Rufus W. Griswold

"Formerly," said Baron Cuvier, in a report to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, "European naturalists had to make known her own treasures to America; but now her Mitchells, Harlans, and Charles Bonapartes, have repaid with interest the debt which she owed to Europe. The history of the American birds by Wilson, already equals in elegance our most beautiful works in ornithology, and if ever that of Audubon be completed, it will have to be confessed that in magnificence of execution the Old World is surpassed by the New." The work of the "American backwoodsman" thus alluded to, has long been completed; the great Cuvier subsequently acknowledged it to be "the most splendid monument which art has erected in honor of ornithology;" and the judgment of mankind has placed the name of our countryman first in the list of authors and artists who have illustrated the beautiful branch of natural history to which he has devoted so large a portion of his long and heroic life.

John James Audubon was born in Louisiana about the year 1782. He was of French descent, and his parents perceiving early the bent of his genius sent him to Paris to pursue his education. While there he attended schools of natural history and the arts, and in drawing took lessons from the celebrated David. He returned in his eighteenth year, and his father soon after gave him a farm near Philadelphia, where the Perkioming creek falls into the Schuylkill. Its fine woods offered him numerous subjects for his pencil, and he here commenced that series of drawings which ultimately swelled into the magnificent collection of The Birds of America. Here too he was married, and here was born his eldest son. He engaged in commercial speculations, but was not successful. His love for the fields and flowers, the forests and their winged inhabitants, we readily suppose unfitted him for trade. At the end of ten years he removed to the west. There were then no steamboats on the Ohio, and few villages and no cities on its shores. Reaching that noble river in the warm days of autumn, he purchased a small boat in which, with his wife and child and two rowers, he leisurely pursued his way down to Henderson, in Kentucky, where his family resided several years. He appears at first to have engaged in commerce, for he mentions his meeting with Wilson, of whom till then he had never heard, as having occurred in his counting-room in Louisville in the spring of 1810. His great predecessor was procuring subscriptions for his work. He called on Audubon, explained the nature of his occupations, and requested his patronage. The merchant was surprised and gratified at the sight of his volumes, and had taken a pen to add his name to the list of subscribers, when his partner abruptly said to him in French, "My dear Audubon, what induces you to do so? your own drawings are certainly far better, and you must know as much of the habits of American birds as this gentleman. "Wilson probably understood the remark, for he appeared not to be pleased, and inquired whether Audubon had any drawings of birds. A large portfolio was placed upon the table, and all its contents exhibited by the amateur ornithologist. Wilson was surprised; he had supposed he was himself the only person engaged in forming such a collection; and asked if it was intended to publish them. Audubon replied in the negative: he had never thought of presenting the fruits of his labors to the world. Wilson was still more surprised; he lost his cheerfulness; and though before he left Louisville Audubon explored with him the neighboring woods, loaned him his drawings, and in other ways essayed to promote his interests and happiness, he shook the dust from his feet when he departed, and wrote in his diary that "literature or art had not a friend in the place." Far be it from me to write a word in dispraise of Alexander Wilson. He was a man of genius, enthusiasm, and patient endurance; an honor to the country of his birth, and a glory to that of his adoption; but he evidently could not bear the thought of being excelled. With all his merits he was even then greatly inferior to Audubon, and his heart failed him when he contrasted the performances which had won fame for him with those of the unknown lover of the same mistress, Nature, whom he thus encountered.

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1

The custom of paying members of the House of Commons for the loss of time and travelling expenses, was common in the seventeenth century; constituencies believed such equivalents necessary for the attention to their interests and wishes which a Parliamentary agent was expected to give. In the old Corporation books of provincial towns are many entries for payments to members of Parliament, and in some instances we find them petitioning to Government for disfranchisement, because they could not afford to pay the expenses of a Member.

2

Marvel's first exposé of Parker's false logic was in 1672, in the poem named above, which was immediately answered by Parker, and re-answered by Marvel, who appears to have had some private threat sent him, as he says his pamphlet is occasioned by two letters; one the published 'Reproof' of him by Parker in answer to his first attack; 'the second, left for me at a friend's house, dated November 3d, 1673, subscribed J. G., and concluding with these words:—If thou darest to print any lie or libel against Dr. Parker, by the Eternal—I will cut thy throat.' This last reply of Marvel's, however, effectually silenced Parker: 'It not only humbled Parker, but the whole party,' says Burnet, for, 'from the king down to the tradesman, the book was read with pleasure.'