tween the arts and industry which other nations are now painfully seeking to re-establish, has never been lost in France. French provincial cities still maintain their academic schools, and we may even now see the municipal councils of poor country towns taxing their slender resources with noble public spirit, to give the boy, whom they hope may one day distinguish himself, a start on his way to Paris. Thus it came to pass that, one by one, the ancient guilds were deprived of that power and importance which they had so long enjoyed, and were relegated to a situation of political insignificance; thus, too, whilst all those organizations by which the interests of the individual or of the family had been subordinated to those of the class or trade were broken up, all caste distinctions, bred of the old order of things, were extended and maintained. In a certain sense-since social grades marked out individuals as endowed with advantages not belonging to the common rank-these caste distinctions, in so far as they were mere distinctions, lent themselves naturally to the aims of absolutism, and all these caste distinctions found a parallel in the titles and privileges conferred on those members of the artistic body who bore rule in the new academies. These men ruled, not as representatives of their brothers, but as delegates of the Crown; animated by a common impulse derived from a common source, they aided in the work of centralization, completed the destruction of provincial types, and gave to French industry and French art that uniform character and style which has distinguished them, throughout all changes of fashion, down to our own time. By this disciplined reaction against that which the Renaissance accomplished, much was lost which we now regret; let us beware lest, in completing the unfinished work, social and political, of that great movement, we lose hold of all that was valuable in the organization by which it was suppressed.-EMILIA F. S. DILKE, in The Fortnightly Review. To trace the means by which Colbert succeeded in calling forth this spirit and by which he renewed and formed the character of industrial production throughout France, is a task of special interest at the present moment, for the perplexing conditions, social and political, with which we now have to deal may be referred, in great measure, to that disciplined reaction against liberty of thought and life which took place in the seventeenth century throughout Europe. In no country was the nature of this reaction more plainly defined than in France; there, the moral and intellectual revolution which we call the Renaissance had, in the preceding century, been carried out, if but partially, to a logical conclusion; there, too, the forces of the reaction were taken in hand by those in supreme power, and promptly put to that work of political and social reorganization the effects of which have lasted in some shape or other to the present day. The revolution which we call the Renaissance was necessarily incomplete, seeing that it never seriously affected either political or social life. Moreover, it is to be noted that as soon as the fabric of political and social life appeared to be menaced and the forces of the reaction were aroused, the very principle to which the Renaissance had owed its existence, the principle of individualism, was actually turned against itself. The great class organizations, the industrial guilds, which had sprung up in the Middle Ages, had been based on the opposite WHAT is now called Kensington Gore conprinciple-the principle of collectivism; the sists of a huge mass, perhaps not wholly legal rights, privileges, and immunities which unsightly, but certainly almost useless, known had accrued, in the course of centuries, to as the Royal Albert Hall, and a dozen mediumthese bodies, formed formidable obstacles to sized dwelling-houses, with a pleasant outlook the establishment of a system of arbitrary on to Kensington Gardens. These houses government. Those in power found, however, were within the last twenty years known as no agent more powerful for the destruction of Hyde Park Terrace, and the Gore was far these societies than an appeal to that very more comprehensive, taking in all the district principle of individual liberty which they from Knightsbridge Barracks to the Kensingdesired to crush out in other directions. For ton turnpike, that stretched across the road the great guilds had always represented the just by the present entrance to Palace Gate, common interests of the arts and trades as dis- with a large public-house just in front of the tinct from, and sometimes even incompatible spot on which stands the fine mansion of Sir with, those of the artisan himself; nothing was John Millais. The house of note in the neigh easier, therefore, than to encourage the disposi-borhood, called Gore House, had been tion to revolt, always latent amongst the abler and more enterprising members, since all such as were suffering from the frequently vexatious restraints imposed by the combination of their fellow-workers naturally looked to the Crown for protection. ABOUT KENSINGTON GORE. tenanted in the early part of the century by William Wilberforce, the great anti-slavery reformer. He seems to have feared that the expense to which he was put to maintain the establishment might compel him to curtail his charities. Wilberforce was succeeded at Gore House | page in the history of Gore House was closed by the Countess of Blessington, whose husband orever. had died a few years previously, leaving her with an income of £2,000 a year, which she largely supplemented by the produce of her pen. The curious difference in the character and characteristics of the two tenants were happily hit off at the time by James Smith: "Mild Wilberforce, by all beloved, Yet here still slavery attacks The chains from which he freed the Blacks, Early in the spring of 1849 the society prophets of the day were justified by the occurrence of an event which they had long predictl ed, and which, indeed, it required no speciapowers of vaticination to foresee. The Countess of Blessington's career of somewhat fullblown splendor was at an end, and Gore House, where she had established a salon, devoid, indeed, of female attractions, save those imparted to it by the hostess, her sister and her charming nieces, but assiduously attended by the dandies, wits, writers and artists of the day-Gore House, with its library, pictures, and bric-a-brac, Gore House was in the hands of the bailiffs, and its garden walls were plastered with auctioneer's bills of the forthcoming sale. I was present, I remember, at one of the " on view" days, and was struck by the then to me novel idea of a large sheet of looking glass forming the back of the alcove in which stood Lady Blessington's bed, but of most of the contents of the house I recollect nothing. Sir Thomas Lawrence's portrait of the Countess was bought by the Marquis of Hertford, and a lovely pair of hands, counterparts in wax of her ladyship's, were secured by Albert Smith, who was an habitué of the house, and in whose dusty old rooms they remained till his death. The Countess had fled to Paris; but never, in her golden prime, had she received so much or such strange company as now poured through the deserted halls. Frigid ladies who would have scorned to enter the house in former days, and anything but frigid ladies who would have given much for the chance, connoisseurs, loungers, Jew dealers, and here and there an old friend of the fallen idol, looking round in grief at the desecrated shrine. Among these, the great novelist and philosopher, whose name was just beginning to be heard. "M. Thackeray est venu aussi," wrote Lady Blessington's French servant to her, "et avait les larmes aux yeux en partant. C'est peut-être la seule personne que j'ai vu réellement affectée à votre départ!" The sale realized upwards of £13,000. Lady Blessington died in June of the same year, and that The third notable tenant of Gore House was a Frenchman named Alexis Soyer, who had become very widely known as the chef de cuisine at the Reform Club, as the inventor of a Relish," and the patentee of a "Magic Cooking Stove," and who, in years to come, was to render real substantial service, to the British army starving before Sebastopol by his culinary skill, and his power of getting the most and most varied amount of nutriment out of a given quantity of food. Not with any idea of residing there himself and giving free dinners to select sets of convives had M. Soyer acquired the rights over the feu-Blessington property. A bit of a charlatan, he had also a keen sense of business, and taking into consideration the fact that the place was in the immediate vicinity of the first Exhibition, and that he was generally accepted as a culinary star of the first magnitude, he thought that a vast dining establishment presided over by him would probably achieve considerable success. An army of builders, carpenters, and decorators, was at once let loose on the premises, and both house and grounds were subjected to extraor dinary alternations. There were Chinese pagodas, and Alhambra terraces, and Venetian bridges: le Salon des Larmes de Danaé, and the Rêverie de l'Etoile Polaire. There was a baronial hall and a Pré d'Orsay, a stalactite pagoda and a gypsies' cave; finally, there was a grand staircase, the ends of which were covered with hundreds of caricature-portraits of well-known people of the day the artist being Mr. G. A. Sala, a young man of two or three-and-twenty, who at that time had given no proof of the literary power which has since won him renown. In his own account of these days, Mr. Sala writes of the visitors who looked in while the place was under preparation as, "Nearly all that was odd, and all that was dis tinguished, native or foreign, in London townThey signed their names in a big book, blazing with gold and morocco, which lay among shavings on a carpenter's bench, in the library. Where is that wondrous collection of autographs, that Libro a'Oro, now?" This question was asked twenty-five years ago, in the first number of the Temple Bar magazine, of which I was the assistant-editor. By a chance occurring to me a few days ago, I am now enabled to now enabled to answer it. The Libro d'Oro is here, at my right hand; it has been placed at my disposition to do what I like with. I have studied it carefully, and as I think there may be some of the readers of this Review who will remember the owners of the names herein inscribed, and feel some interest at having them recalled to memory, I set down the result of my researches. The first name on the opening page is that of a double celebrity, "Dowager Countess of | l'œuvre! merci pour l'hospitalité." On the Essex," being that sweet actress and singer next page we are in the realm of arts and letwho, as" Kitty Stephens," charmed the theatre- ters. Charles Lewis Gruneisen, the wellgoers in the early part of the century, and only known musical critic, who by the way would died within the last two or three years have been hanged as a spy in the Carlist war, Among a number of peers comes "R. Monck- had he not been recognized by Lord Ranelagh, ton Milnes," not yet ennobled, who, as Lord who was fightieg on the other side; George Houghton, was with us till last summer; and Cruikshank; F. Knight Hunt, one of the "Crewe," the eccentric hero of Mr. Mark's earlier editors of the Daily News; Herbert ballad, who is with us still. "George Womb- Ingram, founder of the Illustrated London well and Adolphus Fitzclarence," bracketed News; and Charles Mackay, the poet. Betogether, as in life, recall the two convivial old tween these and the next batch of writers and gentlemen of rubicund countenance and portly Bohemians on the following page, "Mr. (sic) presence, tall-hatted, velvet-collared, and some- Thackeray," written in Titmarsh's neatest and what bulbous-booted, whom one saw so fre- clearest caligraphy; Richard Doyle, Albert quently in all kinds of places. "William Stir-Smith, R. Keeley, written as though with a ling" was afterwards Sir William Stirling Maxwell, of Keir, author of The Cloister Life of Charles V., and second husband of Caroline Norton, whose name is also here. "Eliot Warburton" was the author of The Crescent and the Cross, the only book of Eastern travel which rivals, and by some is considered to surpass, Eothen, who was lost in the burning of the Amazon steam-ship. "Major Mountjoy Martyn and Augustus Lumley" are entries in the handwriting of the last-named, now known as Augustus Savile, now Assistant-master of Ceremonies to her Majesty, but who in those days was a subaltern in the Household Cavalry, and probably brought his very well-known senior officer to see Soyer. "Hy. Webb " was Sir Henry Webb, a bland and blond baronet, mad about music, and a constant attendant at the Garrick Club. "Marchioness of Ailesbury" was the perennial lady who still delights society, now writing her prénom before her title. "Col. Forester" is the Lord Forester who died last Februrary; and "Wilton" is the "wicked earl" of sporting notoriety. burnt stick; Alfred Wigan, very little known then; and Brizzi, a fashionable drawing-room singer; "Douro," the late Duke of Wellington, Frederick Byng, (Poodle) "Lonsdale," the Lord Eskdale of Disraeli, the Lord Colchicum of Thackeray, and "Guiseppe Mazzini." Next we find Dudley Costello, a free lance of light literature; R. Rintoul, editor and proprietor of the Spectator; Count Pahlen, Edwin Landseer, and, determined to hold his own among the celebrities of Europe, written very broad and very black, "C. S. MacArthur, editor Troy Daily Budget, Troy, New York." It is curious to find Lord Lamington's studied elegance of expression having been betrayed into a signature of "Mr. and Mrs. Baillie Cochrane, M. P.; "" Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone " might have been written yesterday, so unchanged is the Premier's hand; A. J. Valpy was, surely, the hated of school-boys; and Regnier, and C. Lafont, the beloved of all the subscribers to Mitchell's French Plays. 66 Not a little knot of men-about-town of the period. H. P. de Bathe, nowadays General, Baronet, pére noble, and everything that there is of most respectable; J. E. Spalding, Handsome Jack, one of the pillars of the Vestris régime, and Charles Shakerley, also Baronet, whose son now reigns in his stead. H. R. The next page is rich in autographs. Here are the signatures of two ex-speakers of the House of Commons, J. Evelyn Denison, who, elevated to the peerage as Lord Ossington, died in 1873; and J. S. Lefevre, the noblest Roman of them all, who at the age of ninety-Webster, and C. S. Webster, are of the same two still lives as Lord Eversley. Joseph Locke, stamp; but the Muses and propriety clear the the great engineer; Henry Drummond, the way in the persons of Sydney, Lady Morgan, eccentric M. P., Archangel of the Irvingite or and Lady Theresa Lewis, and literature and Holy Apostolic Church, of Albury; J. H. art follow after in W. Harrison Ainsworth," Henley, patriarch of the House of Commons; and "Mr. (sic) John Leech," in their own and Bunsen, the Prussian Minister to our handwriting. Viscountess Combermere still Court, are also here. Following these are the lives; "Strangford" was the penultimate peer, names of Elcho, the present Lord Wemyss, the translator of Camoens; George Dawson and his brother F. Charteris; the fashionable was the Birmingham lecturer; Mark Lemon, singing-master, Giacinto Marras; B. Disraeli, round and full; M. J. Higgins the great and M. A. Disraeli. Here also in an inscrip-"Jacob Omnium," with a griffe as clear and tion relative to a "banquet offert aux citoyens delicate as that of his brother-giant, Thackeray ; Henry Vincent, Louis Blanc, Schmeltz et Phil- Thornton Hunt's signature is strong and oxéne Boyer, par les travailleurs français en- rugged; Edward Lytton Bulwer's, small and voyés pour étudier l'Exposition Universelle," refined; and on the same page I find an entry with some extremely drunken signatures at-" H. Cunliffe-Owen, Capt. R. E.," probably the tached, and a final remark, "Bravo pour first appearance of the double-barrelled name which has since become so potential in the | partout en ce moment." A note from Albert neighborhood. Three or four of the leaves of the Libro a' Oro are devoted to entries of dinners given at the Symposium, as it was called after its official opening. Here is the first: "Premier dîner donné chez M. Soyer, le deuxième Mai 1851, par le Capitaine Vivian. Convives : Lady Blanche Dupplin, Lord Dupplin, (now Lady and Lord Kinnoull); Mrs. Dudley Ward, who has since been Mrs. Gerard Leigh, and is now Madame de Falbe; Dudley Ward, Miss H. Hawkes, Lord Colville, now Chamberlain | to the Princess of Wales; Captain J. C. Vivian, the host, "Johnny of that ilk," who died a few years ago. F. S. Murphy, serjeant-at-law, wonderful wit and humorist, and James R. Swinton, the well-known portrait painter, who still survives. Another party consisted of Lords Fortescue, Glenelg and Bateman; Henry Tufnell, Henry Danby Seymour, Chichester Fortescue, A. Hayward, and Charles B. Ford. A third page, headed "the very best dinner that ever was," is inscribed, De Mauley, Edward Ellice, A. Panizzi, of the British Museum; Alfred Montgomery, petit bonhomme vit encore," Frederick F. Quin, the kindly, witty homoeopath, Abercorn, and E. Landseer. 66 Smith, "Very many thanks for the sauce; I remember its good qualities, from the chops we had in the Strand that day," is signed “Albert (ouvrier)," after one of the celebrities of the French revolution of '48. Another from the same is charactistic : My dear Soyer, Will you have the goodness to give me, for a novel I am writing, the menu of a bill of fare for å first-rate dinner for four, at a West-end hotel in July, and as soon as you conveniently can. This will greatly oblige yours very truly, Albert Smith." Novelists nowadays are in different circumstances. They know, none better, out of their own experience, how a menu should be composed, and how, after it has been discussed, the convives sit round the table, crowned with chaplets drenched in Falernian, and smoking rose-scented cigars. Baron Knesebeck, irreverently in those days styled Baron Nosebag, equerry of H.R.H. the late Duke of Cambridge, conveys his Royal Master's thanks for samples of the new-invented beverage, obviously the Nectar, "which was very much approved of by H.R.H." As a last example let me take this, dated "Grosvenor Gate, 31 April, 1851. If M. Soyer has not formed his troop of pages, Mr. Disraeli can recommend the bearer, George Newby, as a very intelligent, strong, and good little boy." Review. MARY HOWITT'S REMINISCENCES. Interleaved with the book is a large number of holograph letters from distinguished person- It remains to say that the Symposium was a ages, addressed from time to time to M. Soyer, failure financially, and expired with the Exhisome of which are oddly and variously inter- bition. In the next year, the Gore House esting. The Marquis of Ailsa asks for a re- Estate was purchased by the Exhibition Comceipt to dress vegitable (sic) marrows. Lady missioners for £60, 000, and the house itself, Donoughmore announces that Lord Donough- after having been for a short time in use as a more never gives his man cook more than 60 School for Science and Art, was levelled to the a year. "La Duchesse de Sutherland présente ground.-EDMUND YATES, in The Fortnightly ses compliments à M. Soyer. Elle sera charmée d'assister à l'ouverture d'une exposition qui, en addition à son intérêt individuel, a celui d'un si bon objet." Lord Lonsdalethe readers of Pendennis will remember that Lord Colchicum penned petits poulets to Madame Brack and her daughter in idiomatic French, and was a thorough master of that language--" Lord Lonsdale est très reconnaissant de l'offre obligeante que lui a fait M. Soyer. Il se propose d'en profiter dimanche. Il y a une dame de haut parage, La Comtesse d'Essex, qui a grande envie de visiter le local qui a embelli M. Soyer, et qui lui saurait très bon gré, s'il voulait fixer un jour, soit vendredi, soit samedi, attendu qu'elle a pris des engagements pour le dimanche." Lord Alvanley sends mille amitiés" to his "cher Soyer," and begs him to "garder la cuisinière sous l'œil." Baronne d'Este profits by the occasion pour vous offrir, Monsieur, ses félicitations pour votre découverte de cette merveilleuse soupe économique. Il est beau, lorsque comme vous on est à la tête de son art, de s'occuper à soulager la misère des malheureux, dont il y a 66 HITHERTO I have said nothing of the lasting pleasure and profit which came into our daily lives by an acquaintance with foreign languages and literature. The Chorley brothers were ardent German scholars, especially William, who in 1829 started us in our study of the language, and lent us books. Whether he had inspired Felicia Hemans, or she him, with this taste I cannot now remember; but she, too, was a diligent learner, and, to use Henry F. Chorley's phrase, in his Memorials of Mrs. Hemans "deeply imbued her spirit with the solemn mysticism of the best works in that language, which she termed 'rich and affectionate.' She and William Chorley carried on the captivating pursuit together, and he was afraid when she left for Ireland that he should become an utter idler in the delightful literature. When I was staying at Liverpool, in 1831, he lent me Herder's rendering of The Cid, commended my translation of Bürger's Brave Man, and had some forty or fifty German volumes to show me. He, his brother Henry, my husband, and myself, read with the greatest zest Carlyle's translations from Tieck and Richter in his "Miscellanies; " Henry Chorley, at the same time, fearing lest the imaginations of my husband and myself were so little narrowed by probabilities, that we should read those romances in faith without starting at the extravagant passages. More cautious than I, Henry Chorley in those early days acted towards me the part of a judicious younger brother; to my daughter Anna Mary (whom as a child he termed "the Cricket," from her vivacity) that of a kind and appreciative guide. He noted the first manifestations of her pure and powerful imagination, and studied with care her youthful drawings; for whatever she read she would illustrate. A talent and passion for art was an inborn portion of her being, and found food and inspiration in all things. Her mind which attained to an early development of thought, imbibed our taste for German, causing her at Heidelberg to feel that we were living with thoroughly awakened senses in the pages of Goethe and J. P. Richter, and to enjoy to the full the combination of the sublime and simple, which surrounded us in German nature and culture. She derived much profit and delight from our visits to the various German capitals and their works of art, and was especially affected by those of Kaulbach. We went at Munich to his atelier, a large, half-neglected looking building, surrounded by trees, in a field of long, waving grass, by which flowed the rapid Isar. We entered a spacious room, in which stood the paintings in progress, and the original sketches of those completed; the most attractive object of all being the cartoon of his famous picture, the Destruction of Jerusalem. In an inner room were pencil sketches of his inimitable illustrations to Reineke Fuchs. On a door leading into a third room was painted a boy and girl, as if done in the very exuberance of fancy, of such loveliness that they would enrich the walls of any house whatever. Kaulbach, then scarcely middle-aged, received us with great courtesy, in the midst of his work. When we asked him if he conversed in English he replied, "I speak no language but German, and that," pointing to his painting. Indeed, what more eloquent and universal tongue need be spoken? Anna Mary, who desired to devote herself to art, felt later that Munich and Kaulbach would afford her the most consonant instruction, and in 1850 went thither, accompanied by a fellow votary, Jane Benham. They were most generously received as pupils by the famous painter, who assigned to their use one of the rooms in his picturesque studio by the Isar. A few days after their departure for Munich Henry Chorley, then leading a somewhat luxurious, literary, bachelor life at the West End, came to tell me he had accepted from Messrs. Bradbury and Evans the editorship of The Ladies' Companion; and he wanted Annie to go to a great miracle play of the Passion, performed that year by the devout peasants of Ober Ammergau, and who would at its termination thank God on their knees, that He had once more permitted them to perform the sacred drama in His honor. There would be Stellwagen to the place from Munich ; and he begged her to write for him a description of the whole story, from the setting out in the morning to the end of the play, as it would be a most valuable and desirable article. She willing complied, and thus first made known this remarkably striking, pathetic, but now trite subject to the English public. Other descriptive letters from her pen appeared in Household Words and the Athenæum. They were much admired, and Henry Chorley encouraged her to collect and publish these scattered bits," which under the title of An Art Student in Munich formed a fresh and charming book, because so genuine. 66 I must now recount some of the effects which Scandinavian literature produced on us. We had not long been in Heidelberg when a new realm of mental wealth unexpectedly opened to my husband and me. Our excellent and highly accomplished friend, Madame von Schoultz, had derived much alleviation from the study of Scandinavian authors in a time of terrible suspense, caused by the mysterious disappearance of her Swedish husband, who, it was subsequently discovered, lost his life in the Papineau rebellion in Canada. With her we commenced Swedish, a delightful employment, which might be called a relaxation rather than a labor, for here were no puzzling terminations, as in German, but a similarity of construction with the English, which made it and its cognate Danish of comparatively easy acquisition. The Danish literature we found richer than the Swedish, both in quantity and variety. The pristine lore of Iceland and Norway was especially collected and translated into Danish. We were enchanted with the fable or saga literature, and found again almost all our ancient nursery tales: the little old woman whose petticoats were cut shorter, Jack the Giant-killer, the pig that would not go over the brig, and the rest. We thus gained quite a respect for those familiar tales, which the wild, stout old Danes brought to Britain from the far north. Then the grand, quaint wisdom of the Eddas, reminding us of Ecclesiastes, such as the sayings: "It is hard leaning against another man's doorpost; "I clothed the wooden figures in my garments and they look |