should die, are not to be taught how to live; they are kept at home, because one boy of theirs died at school."

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One more bucolic sketch, and then we move on to different scenes. It is of the vicar of Tunbridge, and might be placed beside Fielding's picture of the clergy of the period. The good parson made some apology for his undress, which was a true canonical dishabille. He had on a gray striped calamanco night-gown, a wig that once was white, but by the influence of an uncertain climate turned to a pale orange, a brown hat encompassed by a black hat-band, a band somewhat dirty that decently retired under the shadow of his chin, a pair of gray stockings well mended with blue worsted. When we had seen the church, the parson invited us to take some refreshment at his house, but Dr. Young thought we had before enough trespassed on the good man's time, so desired to be excused, else we should no doubt have been welcomed to the house by madam in her muslin pinners and sarsanet hood, who would have given us some mead and a piece of cake that she had made in the Whitsun holidays to treat her cousins." The parson is invited to dine with the visitors; he excuses himself, but comes after ward in hopes of smoking a pipe. To say the truth, I saw a large horn tobacco-box, with Queen Ann's head upon it, peeping out of his pocket."

He was

In 1742 Miss Robinson became the wife of Edward Montagu, a grandson of the first Earl of Sandwich. an elderly man, very wealthy, and appears to have made an excellent husband to a young lady who had very common sense and practical ideas upon the subject of matrimony. Only one child, a son, was born to them, which died in its infancy. Mr. Montagu was a student who devoted all his leisure to mathematics, and, being a large owner of coal-mines, he was a man of business as well. Free of family cares, and probably little troubled with marital companionship, it would have been but natural for the young wife to fall into the usual fashionable round of the time, of which card-playing was the principal occupation.

The passion for gambling was at this period at its height, and in the great

world as it is called-people seemed to have no other object in life than to meet every evening to shuffle cards and to win or lose money. Nor was the passion confined to men and dowagers; young women, mere girls, were as deeply infatuated by the vile pursuit as were their elders. No party, ball, or assembly would have been tolerated or attended unless accommodation had been provided for the indulgence of this vice; as an instance, in the Duke of Richmond's house there were always eighteen card-tables set for the amusement of his guests; the only conversation heard was the jargon of the different games, and disputes between partners and opponents as to the correctness or incorrectness of the play; men would gamble away their patrimonies and fall from wealth to poverty in a single night, and a woman would stake her jewels, her husband's fortune, and even her honor upon the cut of a card. Instead, however, of following the fashion, Mrs. Montagu and a few friends, Miss Boscawen and Mrs. Vesey, who, like herself, were untainted by this wolfish passion, resolved to make a stand against the universal tyranny of a custom which absorbed the life and leisure of the rich to the exclusion of all intellectual enjoyment, and, borrowing the idea from the Parisian salons of Madame du Deffand, Madame l'Espinasse, and their rivals. and imitators, to found a society in which conversation should supersede cards. This was about the year 1750.

How these assemblies first came to be called "Blue-Stockings" has been variously explained. One anecdote relates how Mrs. Vesey, one of the principal ladies of the movement, having met Mr. Stillingfleet at Bath, invited him to one of these reunions, then just being established. This gentleman, who was noted for the unfashionable carelessness of his dress, objected that he was not in the habit of appearing in proper equipments for evening parties. "Oh, never mind," said the lady; come as you are, in your blue stockings." To this, as an addendum, we must add a paragraph from Boswell which completes the anecdote. "One of the most eminent members of these societies was a Mr. Stillingfleet (a grandson of the bishop), whose dress was remarkably grave, and

in particular it was observed that he wore blue stockings. Such was the excellence of his conversation, and his absence was felt so great a loss, that it used to be said, 'We can do nothing without the blue-stockings,' and thus by degrees the title was established.' Forbes, in his "Life of Beattie," gives a similar derivation of the title, and further informs us that it was Admiral Boscawen who, from the circumstance above quoted, first used the term BlueStocking Society, and that a foreigner of distinction, hearing the expression, translated it literally Bas-bleu, by which name these meetings were ever after distinguished. But I think a yet more probable derivation of the term is given in a note to Hayward's "Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Thrale," upon, we are told, the authority of a daughter of Lady Greville, who was one of the Basbleu. When these assemblies were still in their infancy Madame de Polignac, being in London, was invited to one of the breakfasts; she wore on the occasion a pair of blue silk stockings, which fashion was then all the rage in Paris; and thereupon her English friends, who, with all their learning, were not above such feminine weaknesses, adopted this color for their nether casings. It seems more probable that the name should have arisen from such a peculiarity of feminine costume, rather than from an accident of male eccentricity. John Timbs, in "Clubs and Club Life,' traces the Bas-bleu back to ancient Greece; he also quotes Mill's "History of Chivalry," to show that there was established in Venice, in the fifteenth century, a literary society that distinguished itself by its stockings, which were sometimes of blended colors and sometimes wholly blue. As the found ers of the "Blue-Stockings," however, have left no record of the origin of the term, the reader must take a choice among these several explanations.

Mrs. Montagu's first assemblies were held at her house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square, then an unpaved suburban. thoroughfare, dangerous to be abroad in after dusk, on account of footpads and highwaymen that infested the neighborhood. Among the earliest frequenters were Lord Lyttleton, Pulteney, Horace Walpole, Miss Boscawen, Mrs. Carter,

Mrs. Vesey, Boswell, Johnson, Burke, Miss Burney, Mason, Garrick; and in time almost every literary celebrity of the period was included among the visitors.

A certain little chatty French lady, named Madame du Bocage, in her "Letters on England, Holland, and Italy," gave some amusing descriptions of Hill Street society. At this period everything was à la chinoise. Voltaire wrote a Chinese play, L'Orphelin de la Chine, which was translated by Murphy; imaginary Chinese philosophers descanted upon the manners of the Western barbarians, every house was decked out with the monstrosities of China ware, and rooms were furnished after the Pekin pattern; the only wonder is that we did not shave our heads, wear pigtails, and distort the feet instead of the waists of our female children, and take for the nonce to the worship of Buddha.

Madame du Bocage describes how she breakfasted at Mrs. Montagu's in a room lined with Pekin paper, and furnished with the choicest furniture of the Celestial Empire. "A long table, covered with the finest linen, presented to the view a thousand glittering cups, which contained coffee, chocolate, biscuits, cream, butter, toast, and exquisite tea; you must understand that there is no good tea to be had anywhere but in London. The mistress of the house, who deserves to be served at the table of the gods, poured it out herself. This is the custom, and in order to conform to it, the dress of the English ladies, which suits exactly to their stature, the white apron, and the pretty straw hat, becomes them with the greatest propriety, not only in their own apartments, but at noon in St. James's Park, where they walk with the stately and majestic gait of nymphs." These literary breakfasts were imitated by others, but none approached the magnificence of the original.

Mr. Montagu died in 1775, leaving his widow an estate of 7000l. a year; soon afterward she had a mansion erected for herself in Portman Square, then in the process of formation; it is still standing, a detached building at the north-west corner, and is now the town house of Lord Portman; but doubtless it is much altered since the days of the

Bas-bleu assemblies. Hither she removed in 1781. Like all other institutions of the kind, the Blue-Stocking Society in time began to degenerate from its primitive simplicity into eccentricities and undue splendor. The queen now held her court in an extraordinary apartment entirely hung with feathers. This room has been immortalized by Cowper in the little poem On Mrs. Montagu's Feather Hangings," commencing:

"The birds put off their every hue,
To dress a room for Montagu;
The Peacock sends his heavenly dyes,
His rainbows and his starry eyes;
The Pheasant, plumes which round enfold
His mantling neck with downy gold;
The Cock, his arched tail's azure show;
And, river-blanched, the Swan his snow,"

etc.

In one of his "Observers," Cumberland has given a somewhat satirical and exaggerated picture of the Montagu house assemblies, but of which the outlines were doubtless tolerably correct. Under the name of Vanessa, he describes the hostess as a lady who had been either a beauty or a wit all her life, but whose vanity was excusable from the pleasing colors it threw upon her character. It gives the spring to charity, good nature, affability; it makes her splendid, hospitable, carries her into all the circles of fine people, and crowds all the fine people into hers; it starts a thousand whimsical caprices that furnish employment to the arts, and it has the merit of opening her doors and her purse to the sons of science; in short, it administers protection to all descriptions and degrees of genius, from the manufacturer of a toothpick to the author of an epic poem; it is a vanity that is a sure box at an author's first night, and a sure card at a performer's benefit; it pays well for a dedication, and stands for six copies in a subscriber's list.' On the occasion of his visit he finds a number of new works upon the table, with bits of paper between the leaves, and here and there a corner turned down; a cynical-looking personage in the room tells him that you may always know what company to expect by the books that are out, as these are delicate ruses to flatter the authors' vanity and make them believe that she is reading their works. While these two are talk

ing Mr. Observer beholds something approaching which looks like columns, arches, and porticoes in the perspective of a theatrical scene; this is Vanessa, attired in a petticoat upon which are embroidered the ruins of Palmyra in colored silks. The company is diverse; there are an inventor of a diving-bell, of a powder to kill vermin on trees, a young lady novelist (probably "little Burney"), an old woman who models heads in wax, and who informs him that she is the descendant of the witch of Endor, a philosopher (Johnson), and a famous actress (Mrs. Siddons), about whom gather a fashionable mob, who stare at her as though she were some abnormal beast, and question her and cross-question her about every detail of her art; presently a young lady dressed in white and crowned with a wreath of flowers is introduced by Vanessa as a young noviciate of the Muses," and addresses the mortified actress in a copy of fulsome verses. There is a confirmation of the last sketch in one of Mrs. Siddons's letters, in which she describes the scene much as it is given in "The Observer." Hannah More, who was a frequent visitor in Portman Square, and who has capitally described the assemblies in her poem of "The Bas-bleu, complains about this time that "the old little parties are not to be had in the usual style of comfort. Everything is great, and vast, and late, and magnificent, and dull.

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Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, in his "Historical Memoirs of his Own Time,' gives a more sober and reserved picture of Mrs. Montagu in her sixtieth year. He calls her the English Madame du Deffand, and says that her house was the central point of union for all who were already known, or who sought to become known, by their talents and productions. He describes her as thin but well preserved, with a cast of features which was rather satirical and severe than amiable and inviting, with a man

fourscore she could not relinquish her diamond necklace and bows, which formed of evenings the perpetual ornament of her emaciated person ;" and he hints that these glittering appendages of opulence sometimes dazzled those whom her arguments and literary acquirements might not have convinced or intimidated. Yet, notwithstanding such weaknesses, he acknowledges that she possessed a cultivated and enlightened understanding, expanded by books and society, and that she was constantly surrounded by all that was distinguished for attainments, male or female, English or foreign. Still, the society at Montagu House had something of the narrowness of a clique when compared with the universality of the French salons, in which neither creed nor nocreed was black-balled, and where every man of talent from a Jesuit priest to an agnostic was equally welcomed. In her youth Mrs. Montagu had not been untainted with the freethinking spirit of the age, but orthodoxy grew with years, and no Voltaire or Diderot would have been welcomed in her Feather Room; hence among the names of its frequenters we do not find that of Hume or Gibbon.

A great impetus to her celebrity was given by her one literary production, the Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare," written in answer to Voltaire's despicable attack upon the great poet; it created a considerable sensation both in France and England, and, together with the fabulous accounts of her wealth that preceded her, made her the lion of Paris during a visit she paid to that capital. Johnson, in his usual envious, irascible fashion, pronounced a contemptuous judgment upon the brochure, but it has at least the merit of being greatly in advance of the time in true appreciation of its subject. Her letters abound in excellent examples of such an appreciative faculty, and the remarks upon contemporary literature-notably upon Richardson's 'Clarissa Harlowe"-with which they abound may still be read with profit and interest. In one of his gentler moods even the great Doctor was fain to admit that she was a very extraordinary woman, that she had a constant stream of conversation which was always im

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pregnated with meaning. But, although he was a frequent guest at Montagu House, Johnson had seldom a good word for the hostess; probably the Thrale influence had something to do with this, for the brewer's wife aspired to be a literary queen herself, and she would not have been a woman could she have serenely endured to be cast into the shade by one of her own sex. The tone of somewhat contemptuous patronage in which he reviewed the works of Lord Lyttleton, who was Mrs. Montagu's most cherished friend, in his "Lives of Lives of the Poets," gave great offence to the lady.

In Portman Square the old sociable and sensible breakfast gave place to the French fashion, then first introduced, of eight-o'clock teas, at which some fifty to a hundred guests would assemble at long tables and small tables, and eat hot buttered rolls and muffins, and make their own tea, and talk learnedly or foolishly, according to their lights. These eight-o'clock teas became as fashionable as our own five-o'clock teas, and we hear of the Duchess of Bedford sending out invitations from her Bloomsbury mansion, in the summer months, for tea and a walk in the fields; while Lady Clermont, who lived near St. James's Palace, assembled guests for tea and a stroll in the Park. How strange all this sounds to us sojourners in the great unwieldy Babylon of to-day, that, like some monstrous devil-fish, is ever stretching its giant limbs farther and farther among the green fields, and devouring them with insatiable voracity!

As has been already stated, Mrs. Montagu's assemblies found many imitators; Horace Walpole, in one of his letters, has given an amusingly satirical picture of a certain provincial BlueStocking Assembly, presided over by one Mrs. Miller, of Bath. “They have introduced bouts-rimés as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus Fair every Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux and quality of Bath contend for the prizes. A Roman vase decked with pink ribbons and myrtles receives poetry, which is drawn out every festival. Six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel

to Mrs. Calliope Miller, and kiss her fair hand, and are crowned with myrtle. The collection is printed, publishedyes, on my faith, there are bouts-rimés on a buttered muffin, by Her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland, receipts to make them by Corydon the Venerable, alias George Pitt, etc."

Mrs. Montagu survived until the first

year of the present century, being then in her eightieth year; the Blue-Stocking Assemblies died with her, and the literary salon became extinct in England, until it was once more, but only for a brief season, revived by Ladies Morgan, Holland, and Blessington. -Belgravia Magazine.

BY M. KAUFMANN, M.A., AUTHOR OF

How are the demands of Nihilism to be met; what are the measures to be adopted, if any, to quell the growing spirit of discontent? "What shall I do with Bakunin?" said the Emperor Nicholas, after that revolutionist's release from the Austrian prison where he had been incarcerated on account of his political agitation; "I cannot hang him." And so the Tzar of all the Russias sent him into Siberian exile, from which Bakunin, however, escaped after some time, not a wiser, but a wilder man. It was a typical act of autocratic clemency, which has been all along the characteristic of imperial policy toward Nihilist conspirators. It is no less than a confession of impotence on the part of despotism when brought face to face with the hydra of anarchy which it helped in creating but cannot destroy.

It is thus that the Nihilist revolution has taken its course, gaining volume and momentum, sometimes through the encouragement given by judicial leniency and imperial connivance, at other times gaining strength through the resistance and repression of those in power.

The latter method has been recommended by some. There is no danger in a strong policy of repression, says Nicolai Karlowitsch, whose work on the development of Nihilism has been received with general approbation by the Russian press. And for this he relies on the religiously monarchical disposition of the people, the trustworthiness of the army, and the loyalty of the greater portion of the educated people. But it is a notorious fact that, with the growing contempt for an ignorant and corrupt clergy and their superstitious NEW SERIES-VOL. XXXIII., No. 6

formalism, the religious sentiment of the people has been considerably weakened, while the ranks of Nihilism have been reinforced by clerics and their families, the so-called clerical proletariat, and also by a large number of persecuted dissentients from the "orthodox church.” Again, as to the army, we are told by Signor Arnaudo, in his able and comprehensive book on Nihilism, that here, too, there are no less than three kinds of malcontents: those who are enrolled by a merciless system of conscription against their will; those who are pressed into the service as a punishment for political offences and misdemeanors; and, finally, those discontented non-commissioned officers who are not permitted to rise from the ranks, but are condemned to pass their lives in subordinate posts while sprigs of the nobility are set over them, whose supercilious air toward veterans grown old in the service adds to the irritation, and makes the army a fruitful field for the seeds of discontent sown sedulously by Nihilist agitators. As for the loyalty of the educated classes, it is well known that the sympathies with the Nihilist propaganda are as strong here as among the enlightened circles of French society before the outbreak of the Revolution. And, it may be added, as the legists of France, the administrators of the ancien régime, were among the very first to receive with enthusiasm the subversive Socialist theories of the eighteenth century, so in the ranks of Russian officials there are numerous sympathizers with the Nihilist movement. fact, it may be said of every educated Russian of the day, that, Nihilist or not,

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In