North, who could remember systems older and fore even the last generation commenced, and even worse than those which our first reform- his ideas had already been formed from the ers denounced, and who could recollect when associations of a still earlier period. The peimprovements now far outstripped were intro- culiar nature of his office and his abode conduced as extraordinary experiments? Per- duced, no doubt, to the result. If any of his haps, however, the very magnitude of the early associates were men of advanced age, view precluded any comprehensive survey, they could have spoken of such times from and indeed it is not a little striking to read their own recollections, nor is it altogether of such a man-of a man who had lived surprising that a man should talk about the through the most astonishing events of recent Stuarts who might himself have shaken hands history-that the times on which his thoughts with the Pretender. This Prince did not die chiefly dwelt were those of the Stuarts! It till young Routh was ten years of age, so that, seems as if the traditions of Oxford which he if accident had put the chance in his way, he found when he entered made an impression might easily have had an interview with the on his mind beyond the power of succeeding representative of James II. Rarely indeed is events to efface, and as if he had recurred to it that we meet, under any circumstances, what he had learnt from his early contempo- with the example of so protracted a life as raries and his predecessors, in preference to that which has just now terminated, but the imbibing new ideas from the scenes of his instance becomes still more striking when, as manhood and his age. The truth is, perhaps, in the present case, studious habits, literary that when the days of revolution arrived they connections, great opportunities, and unfailing found him, as we have already observed, be- faculties are combined with a length of days yond the age at which external scenes prove so far above the common lot. most impressive. He was past his youth be JOE. ALL day long, with a vacant stare, I often marvel why he was born — Beauty can throw no spell o'er him; Earth may wake at the kiss of Spring, His vague and wandering thoughts enfold Who would not bear the ills of Life, In the cheerful light of the happy day O! that the light of reason would throw FIGHT ON, BRAVE HEART, FIGHT ON. Thou hast the warrior's now begun: Fight on, brave heart, fight on! The knights of old sought Christ's dear grave And roam'd o'er burning waste alone To thine own grave, in youth or age, THE BATTLE OF WOMAN.-A girl of ten displays courage amounting to rashness in her first Engagement, but is usually deficient in steadi ness. From the Athenæum. History of French Society during the Revolu- stimulate conversation: a woman tyrannical in her relations, preferring the courtier to the ac quaintance, the protege to the friend. This woman was Madame Necker. Her salon was full of the divinity of the house. The fortune and the revered genius of M. Necker everywhere revealed themselves egotistically, without modesty. The wife of M. Necker was not sufficiently accustomed to greatness to understand that the host should not attempt to crush the guest. She stood on her husband's fame as on a pedestal, Egeria receiving the subjects of Numa! Famous Général-politicians and authors mixed toThursdays, were the Thursdays of the Contrôle gether; there was conversation, but there was also reasoning; there was scandal, but there was discussion; and if you hearken well you can distinguish that some of the voices are practising for the effects of the tribune. MESSRS. de Goncourt seem anxious that not a single tint necessary to represent their forefathers the founders of whatever in their country is worthy of a boast-as a monstrous and absurd rabble, should be omitted from their canvas. This is partly the reason of the excessive monotony of their work, which it is impossible to read without intervals of repose; but the defect is attributable also in a great measure to literary unskilfulness. Never was the figure of enumeration used and abused to such an extent. From one end of the volume The Abbée Sèyes listens, and is silent; rests, to another we have nothing-or next to noth- and is silent again. Parny dreams, speechless ing but a catalogue o facts imperfectly and modest; Condorcet argues, and Grimm restated, a series of allusions, a deluge of ex-peats his adieus to France, which is no longer a clamations! Perfectly to appreciate the value pretty land of little scandals, but an ugly counof the researches of Messrs. de Goncourt it try of great events. In the midst of all, a woman, with a face of a lion, purple, pimpled and would be necessary to consult all their notes, dry-lipped, comes and goes, rude in body as in and, in fact, to read the history which they ideas, masculine in gesture, uttering, in the voice have not written. of a boy, her vigorous and swelling phraseology - A capital mistake, committed by them in-it is Madame de Staël. There, near the chimcommon with many historians, is to contrast ney-piece, is M. Necker himself, heavily mathe elegant manners, the vicious politeness, noeuvring his clumsy commercial figure, and and the graceful corruption, of the middle of talking to the Bishop of Autun, who smiles in the eighteenth century, with the rough, rugged, order not to speak, and speaks in order not to earnest vulgarity of its close, and to intimate inserted in some couplet an allusion to "the king answer. Presently is presented a poet, who has that "society" was thus "transformed" by the of Opinion," or a deputy of the Third Estate, force of revolutionary principles. But with won over to the Author of the " Compte Rennew principles arose new men and new clas- du," anxious to protest the sincerity of his adses; and a faithful account of the manners miration and the submission of his vote. But and habits of the butchers, masons, costermongers, laborers, who swarmed beneath the feet of the gay and refined nobility under Louis the Fifteenth, though the contrast might not be so striking, would probably suggest more useful meditations than a rhetorical comparison of the period of comedy, opera, romance, "historiette and bagatelle," with the period of violence, terror, extravagance, émeute and guillotine. these great Thursdays of Madame Necker are, so to speak, mere public receptions-and the intimate réunion is the "little supper" on Tuesday with twelve or fifteen guests. These people the vestibule. In the little salon of Madame de come in undress, and hackneys drive up quite to Staël, "the red chamber," said some- my delight," as she herself called it-the Abbé De-. lille, in whom the applauded poet forgets the holder of rich benefices menaced, declaims his episode of the Catacombs of Rome with all The progress of the influence of the salons, lights put out; and near him is the Duchess of which from mere centres of gossip and intrigue Lauzun, "of all women the gentlest and the became gradually schools of philosophy and most timid," who, nevertheless, insulted a strangpolitical clubs, might have furnished the sub-er in a public garden for speaking ill of her idol, ject of some good preliminary sketching; but the authors of the History of French Society' have no plan. They are bewildered by the immense variety of their materials; and it seems only by accident that we find a sketch of the salon of Madame Necker: who will write no more because Tragedy walks M. Necker; or Lemierre, the single-line poet, the streets. Bouts-rimés delight everybody, and the old Duc de Nivernois is crowned. At eleven o'clock, when the servants have retired, some guest, until then silent, rises; poetry is hushed, and wit goes to sleep. Some orator of the National Assembly, some Count of Clermont-Tonnerre, declaims the speech he is to pronounce at The first salon of Paris was held then at the the next sitting, consulting, according to custom, house of a woman without birth, beneficent with- the good will of the company before venturing out charity, virtuous without grace, with great to appear before the public. The orator reads vanity and little pride, witty, but of that cold and his work especially to Madame de Staël, the reasonable mood that presides over and does not | Areopagite of the meeting, practising his voice and feeling the effect of his phrases at this rehearsal of eloquence. -a proceeding regarded as little short of insanity. Not long afterwards, the stones of the Bastile were selling at the same price per This picture, successful to a certain extent, pound as meat, and Lord Stanhope received though vague in tone and not exempt from with delight a large parcel from the Chevalier prejudice, is the best in the book. Soon after- D'Eon. But Messrs. de Goncourt prefer the wards, as we have intimated, the abundance dismal to the gay. They relate at length the of materials becomes too great; and the writers story of the Harlequin Bordier, who turned no longer know how to manage them. They demagogue, in order to record that when he give a frightful picture of the spread of the put his foot on the first round of the ladder spirit of gambling, and labor to produce the leading to the scaffold some ferocious habituė impression that this vice was the product of of the Variétés exclaimed, mimicking his former the Revolution, although it was as rife and as accents, " Shal! I go up, or shall I not go up? hideous among the noblesse under the old Dear me, which shall it be?" regime as it ever could have been afterwards. In 1764, Voltaire, thinking he was making When the people got the upperhand, they imi-a very bold statement, said "The time will no tated the manners of those who had lorded it doubt come when the Saint Barthélemy will over them; and it was not their fault that they be chosen as the subject of a tragedy." Chenier found no better models. If the rich frequented wrote Charles IX'; and never was there a the "Bank of the Thousand Louis" in the Rue greater success on the stage, though when he Vivienne, it is no wonder that the sansculotte, read it in the salons of the Vicomte de Ségur who could risk no more than six liards, should most people yawned and none were moved. set up a bank of his own in the Rue Richelieu, Talma first showed his powers in this piece, where the winners dined on haricots and from which has been called the real inauguration of age de cochon, whilst the losers passed the night a national drama in France. It is true that in supperless on the wooden benches. Those 1747 a Francis II.' in prose had been pubwere the times when the Chevalier Bouju, at lished, and the President Henault had had the the point of death, called for cards, and play- boldness to say: "Why should not our history ing, whilst the rattle was in his throat, won for furnish subjects for tragedy? Ought not the himself the funeral of a prince! The Comte example of Shakespehar to encourage us?" de Genlis kept a gaming-house-Garnel, the Messrs. de Goncourt lament this revolution, valet de chambre, did so likewise. and exclaim "The National Tragedy killed The Messrs. de Goncourt have collected Tragedy itself!" Throughout the volume some of the good sayings of those times; and there is the same complaining tone; and, ininsert them here and there in their intermin-deed, the object of the writers seems rather to able enumeration. "Marie Antoinette," said be to libel the Revolution than to give an imRivarol, was nearer her sex than her rank." partial picture. An idea of the spirit in which They quote the mot without seeing all its they go to work may be formed from the single meaning. When the Bastile was demolished, fact that, speaking of the emigration of the the literary men all set up the cry that "their nobles, they say: "What was the Edict of lodging-house was demolished." They might Nantes compared to this loss and this depopuhave added the little-known anecdote of the lation ?" We can only recommend their labors, Abbé Morellet, who having forgotten his therefore, as materials for more philosophical only spare shirt in his dungeon, had the im- students. prudence to write to the governor to claim it, 66 - The name of MISS FERRIER, author of three spirit of their dialogue, and by the manner in well-known Scottish novels - Marriage," "Des- which they keep alive the irritation of suspense, tiny," and "The Inheritance," must be added through the agency of vulgar and unpleasant perto the obituary of the year. She was the daugh- sonages. Like Miss Burney's novels, Miss Ferter of a legal gentleman in Edinburgh, intimately rier's have the merit of being carefully wrought, acquainted with the Scotts,-was commemorated and distinct in the impressions they leave behind as a "sister spirit" by the Author of "Waverly," them. They contain persons. -not ideas and in one of his early prefaces or leave-takings- principles dressed up. Years have elapsed since and has honorable mention in Lockhart's Life of we read them, yet we recollect as familiar friends the Poet, as a trusted and honored friend who the virgin sisters three in " Marriage,”- the woowaited on him during the latter part of his decaying of Miss Bell and the Major, and the intrusive ing life. Miss Ferrier appears to have been an Miss Pratt in "The Inheritance." In right of authoress by chance rather than habit- for the these real beings of the fancy, Miss Ferrier's tales three tales named above are, so far as we are will keep their place by the side of Galt's "Anaware, the only works by her which have been nals of the Parish," "Entail," and "Ayrshire published. In spite of the character given to them Legatees." and can never be forgotten when the by their homely nationality, they remind us of annals of north-country fiction are written. Miss Burney's novels, by their humor, by the From Women as they Are. will add to my unpopularity, as it must be impossible for a third person to comprehend what it is all about. The very bland and Ir is singular, but true, that woman rarely specious Lady Boothby, or Mrs. Floyd, will trusts woman in any great emergency. The still less allow you to understand them as they erring, who might readily be reclaimed, are really are; and, in both cases, you will be driven out of the path of the frigid virtue that flattered and mystified in proportion to your keeps on its own narrow and unprofitable" eligibility." The world abounds with Miss way; the unfortunate, who fall from a posi- Collises, and Lady Boothbys, and Miss Rawtion, are held aloof by the worldliness that sons; and society becomes familiarized with sees no advantage in continued contact; the the low elements of their teaching, and their sensitive in feeling, and elevated in thought, example; reconciled to the worthless profesare too frequently hardly tried, and marvelled at, and driven to and fro, until life becomes a weariness to them. Who shall say that this is not true? and retaliate with painfully acquired strength, and the scorn that embitters every better feeling upon which it is enforced. sion by which religion is degraded; to the unscrupulous scheming, and heartless ambition, that not only carry on a degrading traffic in human flesh, but remorselessly coerce human If it were equally true, as some would lead affections, and barter the spirit, with its divine us to believe, and as I once believed, that no capabilities, for basest of earth's clay; to the woman of refined thought, of sensitive feeling, pitiful malice, and winged calumny, that also need lack protection, need enter into the hard have their victims, stricken down in the dark, struggle for bare existence, it would matter to rise no more it may be, or rise only to resist less; but this is not so. It would matter less if men, cowardly and cruel, did not cast a reproach, readily recognized by the other sex, upon such means of honorable exertion as are I sit sometimes and think of what Bertha open to women. To widows, compelled to more than once said to me-"Never trust the struggle for their children; to sisters, on woman who has no generous impulse about whom falls the maintenance of brothers and her." My ideal woman is frank, intelligent, sisters left to their charge; to daughters and generous, energetic, gentle, and tender to the wives, required to strive for whole families, in- heart's core, and has a dash of romance about cluding the husband or father, who are sink- her. The romantic are ever buoyant; for soing prematurely, overtasked, or who have be- called romantic feelings are only an evidence come imbecile, as men have done, and yet will of the spirit's fresh life. They do not readily do, amid trial that woman endures to the end. sink into the dry-rot of an inane existence; I think of all this with sorrow, when I feel they do not swell the list of the nervous-mindfrom experience that there is no earthly | ed, and the sordid, and the mean, and the introuble, however great, which the sympathy triguing, and the self-righteous. Of them are of an earnest, warm-hearted, intelligent Chris- not made the slatternly or shrewish wives, the tian woman might not alleviate, if it could not incapable or indifferent mothers, the treacherbe removed. The really dangerous women ous friends, of whose existence we may hear are those who are never completely under- any day on all sides. They are widely separstood except by women. That amiable Miss ated from the women-cold, and hard, and Collis, who is smiling so sweetly upon you wanting in intelligence and sensibility—who, now, sir-whose subdued manner, and low, with sour and supercilious, aspect, entrench measured voice, are so suggestive to you of themselves in their small circles, and consider popular ideas of feminine perfection-exhibits the promulgation of tracts, and the patronage herself in a very different way to me. She is of missionary meetings, equivalent to sitting at far cleverer than she will allow you to under- the feet of Jesus, clothed in the right mind stand. that is never wanting in true humility. They After taking much pains to discover exactly take no ungenerous advantage of simplicity or how I am situated, and where I am most as- timidity; they stand not aloof from detraction sailable on what point touching my affec--they would not willingly sully the pure, tions, my pride, my hope, or fear, or self- bright current of their own thoughts. They esteem, I can most readily be humbled, disconcerted, cut to the very depth of an unhealed heart wound-she will come out strongly with bitter and galling remarks, scarcely to be borne, and rendered the more unendurable, because of the calm, quiet tone in which they are uttered. She will do this with the more caution, because, believing me to be "an odd person," she has reckoned on the probability of my making an exhibition of temper that may startle many around them by an honest outburst of indignation; but they will not harbor malice, or seek to perpetuate the evil they have denounced. Above all, the romantic are strong in religious faith; for the ideas of perfection and beneficence, and beauty, and goodness, and truth, are most powerfully developed in them. Let no sceptic come near them, with his cold philosophy and cheerless creed, that consigns "dust to dust" even while the living flesh | allied to the carnest truth and the deep-rooted might alone and well confute him by the affections out of which they spring spontapower of its unconquerable instincts. Those neously, amid circumstances requiring the who have once tasted of the water of life at grandest developments of individual power. the fountain head, are not to be dismayed by Thousands of these, the bright-spirited and the reports of its after-failing course, amid the warm-hearted, are in our midst; and surely miry and darkened ways of an imperfect and one result of the wider spreading of intellifaithless world. gence will be sensible manifestation of their Of this class were the women who in all genial influence upon social life; an influence ages and countries have greatly signalized quiet and unobtrusive, yet felt and acknowlthemselves in true womanly ways, bearing edged everywhere, and resulting in increased witness before, time past and to come, that gladness, in increased purity, a perceptible true nobility of soul, steadfastness of purpose, extension of the peace and good-will that heroic courage and high faith, are naturally must herald in the dawn of a brighter day. ENGLISH AND FRENCH DESIGNS. MR. MERCER, a practical designer, calls attention to a mistake which appears in a popular magazine, and is generally shared, we think, by the outside public.- -as to the present position of artistic design in England, and the dependance of our manufacturers on the skill of the Parisian artist. cils, the difficulty of assigning a proper place to the teaching of art in its connection with manufactures, have been till very lately the leading characteristics in our efforts to improve the artistic capabilities of the English designer. And, indeed, how could it have been otherwise in a country where scarcely anything had ever been previously attempted in a similar direction and where a comparatively new and difficult Mr. Mercer, writing to a local paper, says :- problem had to be encountered in the attempt to "Fraser's Magazine for the current month, in an apply a higher standard of Art to the limited exarticle entitled "Painting in England," writes:-ecutive conditions of our various industrial pro"A very few years ago, ere yet our schools of de-ductions? To imagine that, out of such mere sign had arisen, no original patterns of any kind beginnings, a new class of designers has already were issued by the hand of the English artist.arisen, equal to the French, whose schools of deIt was impossible that an Englishman could sign and galleries of paintings have been in exmake a skilful design. But, in 1854, nous avonsistence, free and open to all, for such a long perichangé tout cela," and the manufacturer no longer od, is paying a higher compliment to our promakes his perennial trips to Paris, in search ofgressive capabilities than the most favorable view novelty and fashion." of the facts will justify. By far the greater num Practical acquaintance with this subject en-ber of our present designers have never received ables me to state that, so far is the latter part of any teaching whatever in these schools; the this extract from being correct, that the business great number of the students consists of those who transacted by English, and more especially by are learning the business, and who have not yet the Manchester manufacturers, with Parisian gained the position of actual designers; when designers, is in no degree less extended than it the transition from this apprenticeship stage has was some years ago. I feel confident that I do been passed, and a class of English designers not make an exaggerated calculation, when I arises who have received their education in these state that at least 20,000. is now annually ex-schools, then it will be soon enough to seek for pended on the purchase of French designs and the fruits, and to criticize the principle of our French échantillons by our English printers.-present attempts for the improvement of Art. The number of designers' ateliers in Paris have That we may be allowed to be very sanguine rapidly increased during the last two or three with respect to the consequences, is admissible; years, owing as we may be sure, almost exclu- but that we should already seek for them, nay, sively to the great encouragement afforded them from the sources just mentioned. even profess to find them, only proves our inexperience of the slowly operating character of all Paris, in spite of all its social and political great and real educational advancement. For changes-the city of revolutions-is still as pre- any improvement that may have manifested itself eminently the central emporium of fashion and of late in industrial design, we are indebted not of taste, as it was ere a single school of design to our own schools, but to the increased union existed in this country. The writer of the above of English capital and Parisian taste, to the inextract is not only totally wrong with regard to troduction into this country of French workmen, facts; he is equally far from the truth in his ref- whose superior productions have stirred up a erences respecting the influence which he sup- spirit of emulation amongst English designers, poses schools of design to have exercised on the as complimentary to the former as it has been industrial art of this country. Up to the present beneficial to the latter."-This explanation and period, the art-education, commenced but a few admission seems to us just and reasonable; and years ago in our schools of design, has been not only applicable to the remarks on which it is little more than a series of experiments ;- based, but also to popular Art-criticism in genechanges of systems and masters, disputes be-ral. In these matters we have not yet learnt the tween the government inspectors and local coun-I virtues of patience. |