young couple, whose acquaintance I had had the honor of making through a common female friend, Madame de Grandville. Having once or twice dined at their table, Madame was thereupon kind enough to bestow on me the agreeable title of an ami de la maison; and I was at the time rather proud of this circumstance, little thinking how much the distinction would cost me. One evening, I was comfortably seated in my fauteuil à la Voltaire, perusing one of those papers which are read with as little attention as they are written by the journalists themselves, and which Lamartine has described as cet écho du matin que le soir on oublie, when the bell rang at my door. On opening, I recognized my first-floor neighbor, the amiable M. de Poupart; and after the usual salutations, the following conversation took place be tween us : "Excuse me, sir," said M. de Poupart, "for interrupting you at so late an hour; and an apology is the more necessary, because I am about to commit an indiscretion." "I am glad to hear it," said I; "for I was afraid at first some misfortune might have happened to Madame." "O no, thank you; she is as well as can be expected in her situation; for I have come to say, that since the afternoon I have had the good fortune to become the father of a most beautiful baby-a chubby, rosy little fellow." "I'm glad to hear it: pray accept for both Madame and you my best congratulations and most sincere good wishes." "A thousand thanks," said my obliging neighbor; "and in connection with that happy event, I have just something very trifling to ask of you. My good wife, as you must be aware, is a little inclined to superstition, and the convent education she received has not done much towards lessening that disposition. You may imagine with what anxiety she pondered over the future destinies of our expected first-born, and touching them she consulted a famous somnambulist, who predicted that the baby would be very fortunate if it had a happy godfather. We have been on the look-out ever since among our friends and acquaintances for the most prosperous. But this is difficult: one has too many children; another none at all; a third has a cross wife; a fourth has speculated in the funds: in short, there is not one in the whole circle who would exclaim, with Candide's metaphysical pedagogue, that all is for the best in this best of worlds. At length it struck Madame Poupart that you are a true child of fortune-a thoroughly lucky man." acknowledged the compliment by bowing in silence. "Yes, you-a bachelor, without cares or anxieties of any kind, enjoying good health and a fine independenceyou stand in the very sunshine of fortune; and therefore I ask you, in my own name and that of my wife, to stand godfather to our child." At first I declined politely, thinking the request a little curious; but M. de Poupart called it a trifle-although he should feel much obliged; and there is always something so touching even in maternal weakness and superstition, that I assented at last. As Roman Catholics are accustomed to baptize their children as soon as possible, the ceremony was fixed for the next day but one, and was to take place at the venerable church of St. Roch. There was no time to be lost; and, being thoroughly ignorant of French manners and usages, I applied the next morning to Madame de Grandville, and begged her to tell me what I was to do. She was exceedingly kind; assured me that the invitation was a token of high consideration on the part of M. and Madame de Poupart, and said there was nothing at all to do but to make a few trifling presents. Besides, I was to` enjoy the good fortune of having one of the most elegant and beautiful young ladies of Paris-that is to say, her own dear niece as partner in the ceremony, for she was to stand godmother. The obliging lady immediately wrote a memorandum of what was wanted, addressed to the director of La Belle Jardinière, a very fashionable establishment of nouveautés, as the Parisians call it. She would look after the rest herself. I returned thanks, took took the billet, and drove hastily to the elegant shop. A very engaging demoiselle de boutique (at home we call her a shop-woman) read the letter, and showed me at once a charming godchild's basket. It was lovely indeed, but it cost 47. Nothing else would do, said the pretty demoiselle, and so I took it. Then she herself chose a beautiful box, the perfume of which was exquisite, and filled it gracefully with two dozen pair of fine gloves, two fans-one a precious antique, and the other an artistic modern one-several vials of essences, morning I received a beautiful bouquet and a necklace of Turkish pearls. She from Madame de Grandville's elegant handed me at the same time a handsome niece. I thought it ugly, for it cost too bill-written on glazed paper, adorned much. I had the honor of fetching the with an engraving in gold-and the differ-blooming lady in a carriage, and we drove ent items amounting to 17. I did not to the church; the godmother having put dare to raise an objection, as this pretty my necklace of Turkish pearls round her box was destined for my elegant partner, fair neck, and I holding her flowers in my and I took, reluctantly, I must confess, hand. My costly presents had been twenty-one napoleons out of my purse. thankfully received by the young mother, the nurse, and the nursery-maid, and my good taste was much applauded. In the church, a new series began. Before the child was christened, I had to give a waxtaper to the curé, an offering to the vicaire, pour-boires to the sexton, the choristers, the suisse, the sacristan, the door-keeper, the giver of holy water; besides alms for the poor of the parish, the wants of the I thought this was behaving pretty well, and went triumphantly to Madame de Grandville, who did not look absolutely delighted. "The box," she remarked, "though not at all rich, is handsome, and I hope your fair lady will receive it with pleasure. But see, here are the beautiful little presents I have bought for you to give the the accouchée: fifty francs' worth of bon-church, the missions, the convents, etc. I bons and sweets of the best description, to fill the basket and divide among the guests; a bronze night-lamp by Cain, and a silver bowl engraved by FromentMeurice-the two for twenty louis: you could not offer less to a lady of fifty thousand francs a year; for the nurse, a cap of real lace, five louis-a mere nothing; for the nursery-maid, this French shawlthat is enough for her. I should have liked to buy something besides for the baby, but we must do things as simply as possible." I stood amazed. It cost me more than 100%., that Madame de Poupart had consulted a somnambulist, and thought me a lucky fellow. And, besides, there lay before me a frightful series of étrennes, to be given every year to my blessed godchild. But what could I do? The pill was bitter indeed, but I was obliged to swallow it with the best grace I could. I had pledged my word, and fallen into the snare. The happy day arrived, and in the thought it would never come to an end. At last the baby was duly received into the Christian community, and we went away, the suisse preceding us with great pomp, and striking his cane against the pavement of the holy building in a masterly way. I hung my head, for my purse was empty; and, besides, I had the mortification to see that another name than mine was entered in the parish register, because I did not belong to the Catholic persuasion, and to hear that my godchild did not even bear my name: for who in France would consent to have a son called Peter? Désiré-Eugène is much prettier, and more modern. So I had spent about 120 guineas for a compliment from Madame de Poupart, a courtesy from the nurse, a nosegay from the godmother, and a flourish from a suisse with a cocked-hat. I found these rather expensive honors, and declared inwardly, like the poor raven in La Fontaine's fable, Mais un peu tard, qu'on ne m'y prendrait plus. From Titan. STORMS IN ENGLISH HISTORY. BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY. Meantime, what was it that had stolen like a canker-worm into the machinery of these monastic bodies, and insensibly had corroded a principle originally of admitted purity? The malice of Protestantism has too readily assumed that Popery was answerable for this corrosion. But it would be hard to show that Popery in any one of its features, good or bad, manifested itself conspicuously and operatively: nay, to say the simple truth, it was through the very opposite agency that the monastic institutions came to ruin it was because Popery, that supreme control to which these monasteries had been con WHAT two works are those for which at this moment our national intellect (or, more rigorously speaking, our popular intellect) is beginning clamorously to call? They are these: first, a "ConversationsLexicon," obeying (as regards plan and purpose) the general outline of the German work bearing that title; ministering to the same elementary necessities; implying, therefore, a somewhat corresponding stage of progress in our own populace and that of Germany; but otherwise (as regards the executive details in adapting such a work to the special service of an English public) moving under moral restraints sterner by much, and more faith-fided, shrank from its responsibilitiesfully upheld, than could rationally be weakly, lazily, or even perfidiously, abanlooked for in any great literary enterprise doned that supervisorship in default of resigned to purely German impulses. For which neither right of inspection, nor duty over the atmosphere of thought and feel- of inspection, nor power of inspection, was ing in Germany there broods no public found to be lodged in any quarter-there conscience. Such a Conversations-Lexi- it was, precisely in that dereliction of cencon" is one of the two great works for sorial authority, that all went to ruin. All which the popular mind of England is corporations grow corrupt, unless habiwaiting and watching in silence. The tually kept under the eye of public inother (and not less important) work is-spection, or else officially liable to searcha faithful "History of England." We will ing visitations. Now, who were the reoffer, at some future time, a few words gular and official visitors of the English upon the first; but upon the second-monasteries? Not the local bishops; for here brought before us so advantageously in that case the public clamor, the very in the earnest, thoughtful, and oftentimes eloquent volumes of Mr. Froude-we will venture to offer three or four pages of critical comment. 66 Could the England of the sixteenth century have escaped that great convulsion which accompanied the dissolution of the monasteries? It is barely possible that a gentle system of periodic decimations, distributing this inevitable ruin over an entire century, might have blunted the edge of the fierce ploughshare: but there were difficulties in the way of such arrangements, that would too probably have thwarted the benign purpose. notoriety of the scandals (as we see them reported by Wicliffe and Chaucer), would have guided the general wrath to some effectual surgery for the wounds and ulcers of the institutions. Unhappily the official visitors were the heads of the monastic orders: these, and these only. A Franciscan body, for example, owed no obedience except to the representative of St. Francis; and this representative too uniformly resided somewhere on the Continent. And thus it was that effectually and virtually English monasteries were subject to no control. Nay, the very corrections of old abuses by English parlia mentary statutes had greatly strength- prevailing in the majority of religious houses, for the three following reasons: First, because the main record of such abuses, after it had been elaborately compiled under the commission of Henry VIII., was (at the instigation of his eldest daughter Mary) most industriously destroyed by Bishop Bonner; secondly, because too generally the original oath of religious fidelity and secresy, in matters interesting to the founder and the foundation, was held to interfere with frank disclosures; thirdly, because, as to much of the most crying licentiousness, its full and satisfactory detection too often depended upon a surprise. Steal upon the delinquents suddenly, and ten to one they were caught flagrante delicto: but upon any notice transpiring of the hostile approach, all was arranged so as to evade for the moment-or in the end to baffle finally— search alike and suspicion. The following report, which Mr. Froude views as the liveliest of all that Bishop Bonner's zeal has spared, offers a picturesque sketch of such cases, according to the shape which they often assumed. In Chaucer's tale, told with such unrivalled vis comica, of the "Trompington Miller and the two Cambridge Scholars," we have a most life-like picture of the miller with his "big bones," as a "dangerous" man for the nonce. Just such a man, just as dangerous, and just as big-boned, we find in the person of an abbot-defending his abbey, not by any reputation for sanctity or learning, but solely by his dangerousness as the wielder of quarterstaff and cudgel. With no bull-dog or mastiff, and taken by surprise, such an abbot naturally lost the stakes for which he played. The letter is addressed to the Secretary of State: "Please it your goodness to understand, that on Friday the 22d of October, (1535,) I rode back with speed to take an inventory of Folkstone; and thence I went to Langden. Whereat immediately descending from my horse, I sent Bartlett, your servant, with all my servants, to circumsept the abbey, [i. e., to form a hedge round about,] and surely to keep [guard] all back-doors and starting holes. I myself went alone to the abbot's lodging-joining upon the fields and wood." [This position, the reporter goes on to insinuate, was no matter of chance: but like a rabbit-warren, had been so placed with a view to the advantages for retreat and for cover in this moment, yes, at this present midsummer of 1856, waiting and looking forward to the self-same joyful renewal of leases that then was looked for in England, but not improbably, alas! summoned to the same ineffable disappointment as fell more than three centuries back upon our own England-lies, waiting for her doom, a great kingdom in central Europe. She, and under the same causes, may chance to be disappointed. What was it that caused the tragic convulsion in England? Simply this: regular and healthy visitation hav the adjacent woodlands.] "I was a good space knocking at the abbot's door; neither did any sound or sensible manifestation of life betray itself, saving the abbot's little dog, that within his door, fast locked, bayed and barked. I found a short poleax standing behind the door; and with it I dashed the abbot's door in pieces ictu oculi, [in the twinkling of an eye,] and set one of my men to keep that door; and about the house I go with that poleax in my hand-ne forte ["lest by any chance"-holding in suspense such words as "some violence should be offered"]-ing ceased, infinite abuses had arisen; and for the abbot is a dangerous, desperate knave, and a hardy. But, for a conclusion, his gentlewoman bestirred her stumps towards her starting holes; and then Bartlett, watching the pursuit, took the tender demoisel; and, after I had examined her, to Dover-to the mayor, to set her in some cage or prison for eight days. And I brought holy father abbot to Canterbury; and here, in Christ Church, I will leave him in prison." these abuses, it was found at last, could not be healed by any measure less searching than absolute suppression. Austria, as regards some of her provinces, stands in the same circumstances at this very moment. Imperfect visitations, that cleansed nothing, should naturally have left her religious establishments languishing for the one sole remedy that was found applicable to the England of 1540. And what was that? It was a remedy that carried along with it revolution. England was found able in those days to stand that fierce medicine: a more profound revolution has not often been witnessed than that of our mighty Reformation. Can Austria, considering the awful contagions amongst which her political relations have entangled her, hope for the same happy solution of her case? Perhaps a revolution, that once unlocks the fountains of blood in central Germany, will be the bloodiest of all revolutions: whereas, in our own chapters of revolution even the stormiest, those of the Marian Persecution and of the Parliamentary War, both alike moved under restraints of law and legislative policy. The very bloodiest promises of English history have replied but feebly to the clamor and expectations of cruel or fiery partisans. Different is the prospect for Austria. From her, and from the auguries of evil which becloud her else smiling atmosphere, let us turn back to our own history in the sixteenth century, and for a moment make a brief inquest into the blood that really was shed -whether justly or not justly. Blood"Camisas ;" that is, chemises; but at one time the word camisa was taken indifferently for shirt or shed, as an instinct-bloodshed, as an chemise. And hence arose the term camisado for a appetite-raged like a monsoon in the night-attack, in which the assailants recognized each French Revolution, and many centuries other in the dark, by their white shirt-sleeves, some- before in the Rome of Sylla and Marius times further distinguished by a tight cincture of in the Rome of the Triumvirate, and broad black riband. The last literal camisado, that This little interlude, offering its several figures in such life-like attitudes-its bigboned abbot prowling up and down the precincts of the abbey for the chance of a shy" at the intruding commissionerthe little faithful bow-bow doing its petit possible to warn big-bones of his danger, thus ending his faithful services by an act of farewell loyalty and the unlucky demoisel scuttling away to her rabbit-warren, only to find all the spiracles and peepingholes preoccupied or stopped, and her own "apparel" unhappily locked up "in the abbot his coffer," so as to render hopeless all evasion or subsequent denial of the fact, that ten big-boned "indusio" (or shirts) lay interleaved in one and the same "coffer," inter totidem niveas camisast (or chemises)-all this framed itself as a little amusing parenthesis, a sort of family picture amongst the dreadful reports of ecclesiastical commissioners. No suppression of the religious houses had originally been designed, nothing more than a searching visitation. And at I remember, was a nautical one-a cutting-out enterprise, somewhere about 1807–8, generally in the period of Proscriptions. Too fearfully it is evident that these fits |