Transcriber's Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.

THE
GALLERY OF PORTRAITS:
WITH
MEMOIRS.
VOLUME IV.

LONDON:

CHARLES KNIGHT, 22, LUDGATE-STREET.

1835.

[PRICE ONE GUINEA, BOUND IN CLOTH.]

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES,

Duke-Street, Lambeth.

PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES
CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME.

[1]. The paging of Part XXVII. has accidentally been repeated in Part XXVIII.

Engraved by J. Mollison.
DAGUESSEAU.
(From am original Picture by Mignardi in the
possession of the Conntesa Segur.)
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall East.

DAGUESSEAU.

The Chancellor Daguesseau is said to have been descended from a noble family of the province of Saintonge; if so, he was careless of his privileges, for he never used between the two first letters of his name the comma, indicative of noble birth. He came however of distinguished parentage; for his grandfather had been First President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, and his father was appointed, by Colbert, Intendant of the Limousin, and subsequently advanced to the Intendancies of Bordeaux and of Languedoc. In the latter government he suggested to Colbert the grand idea of uniting the Ocean and the Mediterranean by means of that mighty work, the Canal of Languedoc. In the persecution raised against the Protestants of the South of France by Louis XIV., he was distinguished by mildness; and to his honour be it remembered, one person only perished under his jurisdiction. Disgusted by the dragonnades, and by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he resigned his Intendancy, and removed to Paris, where he continued to enjoy the royal favour, and to be employed in offices of trust: so that he may be said not only to have formed his son’s youth, but to have watched over his manhood.

That son, Henry François Daguesseau, was born at Limoges, November 7, 1668. In 1690, he was appointed King’s Advocate in the Court of the Chatelet, and soon after, at his father’s recommendation, Advocate-General in the Parliament of Paris. On hearing the wisdom of so young a choice brought into question, the king observed, that “the father was incapable of deceit, even in favour of his son.” So brilliantly did the young lawyer acquit himself in his charge, that Denis Talas, one of the chief of the magistracy, expressed the wish, “that he might finish as Daguesseau had begun.” The law-officers of that day did not confine themselves to a mere dry fulfilment of legal functions; there was a traditional taste, a love of polite and classic literature, a cultivation of poetry and eloquence, on which the jurists prided themselves, and which prompted them to seize every opportunity of rivalling the ecclesiastical orators and polite writers of the age. Thus, at the opening of each session, the Avocat-Général pronounced an inaugurative discourse, which treated rather of points of high morality than law. Daguesseau acquired great fame from these effusions of eloquence. Their titles bespeak what they were: they treat of the Independence of the Advocate; the Knowledge of Man; of Magnanimity; of the Censorship. “The highest professions are the most dependent,” exclaimed Daguesseau on one of those occasions; “he whom the grandeur of his office elevates over other men, soon finds that the first hour of his dignity is the last of his independence.” These generous sentiments are strongly contrasted with the despotism of the government and the general servility of the age.

In 1700, Daguesseau was appointed Procureur-General, in which capacity he was obliged to form decisions on the gravest questions of state. A learned Memoir, drawn up by him in the year 1700, to prove that no ecclesiastics, not even cardinals, had a right to be exempt from royal jurisdiction, shows his mind already imbued with that jealousy of Papal supremacy which afterwards distinguished him. But his occupations were not confined to legal functions, the administration of that day being accustomed to have recourse, in all difficult and momentous questions, to the wisdom and authority of the magistracy. Thus Daguesseau was enabled, by directing his attention to the state of the hospitals, to remedy the enormous abuses practised in them, and to remodel these charitable institutions upon a new and philanthropic system. In the terrible famine of 1709, he was appointed one of the commission to inquire into the distresses of the time. He was the first to foresee the famine ere it arrived, and to recommend the fittest measures for obviating the misery which it menaced.

There existed, at that time, few questions on which a French statesman or magistrate found himself in opposition to the sovereign. Constitutional political liberty was unknown; and even freedom of conscience had been violated by the persecuting edicts of Louis XIV. The magistracy had allowed the Protestants to be crushed, awed by the fear of being considered favourers of rebellion. The legal and the lettered class of French, however they had abandoned the great cause of Reform, exaggerated as it had been by Calvin, were nevertheless still unprepared to submit to the spiritual despotism of Rome. They did not presume to question fundamental doctrines of faith; but they rejected the interference of the Pope in matters of ecclesiastical government, and their claim to independence was sanctioned by the ancient privileges of the Gallican Church. And they were resolutely opposed to the faithless and insidious doctrines of the Jesuits, who sought to make the rule of conscience subordinate to the dictation of the priesthood. These two grounds of opposition to Rome and to the Jesuits constituted the better part of Jansenism. Louis XIV., in his later years, commenced a crusade against this species of resistance to his royal will; and, amongst other acts of repression, he procured a Bull from Rome, called Unigenitus, from its first word, which condemned the combined opposition of the Gallican clergy and the anti-Jesuit moralist. In order to be binding upon the French, it was necessary that it should be registered in Parliament. The consent of the great legal officers was requisite, and they were accordingly summoned before Louis XIV. The First President and the Advocate-General had already been won over to the court. The independent character of Daguesseau was the only obstacle; and they had hopes that he might be induced to yield, from the known mildness of his disposition. His parting from his wife on this occasion is recorded both by Duclos and St. Simon: “Go,” said she, as she embraced him; “when before the king, forget wife and children: sacrifice all but honour.” Daguesseau acted by the noble counsel, and remained immoveable, though threatened by his despotic master with the loss of his place. The death of Louis XIV., in 1715, soon relieved Daguesseau from the difficulty of his position.

On the establishment of the Regency, the administration was reorganized on a different plan, each department being intrusted to a council. Daguesseau was appointed member of the Council of Conscience, being, in fact, the ecclesiastical department. He proposed the immediate banishment of the Jesuits from the kingdom; but this measure he was unable to compass. In February, 1717, a vacancy occurred in the office of Chancellor, and the Regent immediately sent for Daguesseau, who was at mass in his parish church, and refused to come until he was twice sent for. When he arrived, the Regent exclaimed to the company, “Here is a new and very worthy Chancellor!” and carrying him to the Tuileries in his coach, made the young king present him with the box of seals. Daguesseau escaped from the crowd to acquaint his brother with his good fortune: “I had rather it was you than I,” exclaimed the latter, continuing to smoke his pipe.

The Regent, however, did not long remain satisfied with his choice, which had been made from a generous impulse of the moment. During the last years of Louis the Fourteenth’s reign, there had been a confusion of parties and of opinions, which were almost all united against the bigotry and despotism of the monarch’s dotage. The grandee and the magistrate displayed equal discontent, and joined in common protestations. On the demise of the monarch, however, this union disappeared. The grandee hoped to see that aristocratic influence restored, which had been suspended since the wars of the Fronde. The magistracy did not favour this idea, being of opinion that the Parliament was the fittest council and check to the authority of the crown. Daguesseau of course inclined to the magistracy, in whose interest he laboured, in conjunction with the Duc de Noailles, to root out the Jesuits, and deprive the church of ultra-montane support. The Duc de St. Simon was of the opposite opinion. He was the partisan of an aristocratic government, and he defended the church, and even the Jesuits, as useful allies. These discordant views led to bickerings in the council. St. Simon accused some magistrates of malpractices. The Chancellor sought, more than was just, to screen them. He obtained a rule, about the same time, that all the members of the Great Council, consisting chiefly of magistrates, should be rendered noble by their office, another offence to the nobility of birth. The Regent, at first inclined to be neutral, soon leaned to the noblesse. The Parliament thwarted him, and showed symptoms of an intention to support his rival the Duke of Maine, the illegitimate son of Louis XIV. The difference between the Regent and the magistracy was widened into a breach by the scheme of Law, and by the advancement of that foreigner to influence in political and financial affairs, which had hitherto been chiefly in the hands of the magistracy. The legists looked upon Law as an intruder, and regarded his acts as audacious innovations. Their remonstrances accordingly grew louder and louder, and their opposition more bold, until the Regent began to fear the renewal of the scenes of the Fronde. The Memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz were then published for the first time; and their perusal, filling the public mind, excited it strongly to renew the scenes and the struggle which they described. The Chancellor’s true office, as a minister, had been to manage the Parliament, to cajole, to persuade, to menace, to repress; but the task suited neither the character nor the principles of Daguesseau, and accordingly nothing but censure of him was heard at court. He was weak, he was irresolute, and lawyers were declared to make very bad statesmen. “They might have reproached the Chancellor with indecision,” says Duclos, “but what annoyed them most was his virtue.”

On the 26th of January, 1718, the seals were re-demanded of him and given to D’Argenson, the famous lieutenant of police. Daguesseau was exiled to his country-house at Fresnes. Whilst in retirement he occupied his time chiefly in the education of his children. His letters to them on the subject of their classical and mathematical studies, lately given to the public, bear witness to his simple and literary bent of mind. Happy it was for Daguesseau to have been removed from the troublesome scene of public life during the two years of Law’s triumph and the disgrace of the magistracy. When Law’s scheme exploded, amidst the ruin and execration of thousands, the Regent, not knowing whither to turn for counsel and support, resolved at least to give some indication of returning honesty by the recall of Daguesseau, who resumed the seals with a facility that was censured by many. Law was deprived of the place of Comptroller-General of Finance, though continued in the management of the Bank and the India Company. In his place certain of the Parliament were admitted to the Councils of Finance, so that Daguesseau seemed to have had full security against the continuance of that infamous jobbing by which the public credit had been destroyed. He was disappointed. The Place Vendôme, in front of his abode, being the exchange of the day, was crowded by purchasers and venders of stock; until the Chancellor, unable to suppress the nuisance, caused it to be removed elsewhere.

The reconciliation between the government and Parliament, produced by Daguesseau’s return, did not last long; and Law having sent an edict respecting the India Company for that body to register, a tumult occurred while they were debating on it, in which the obnoxious financier was torn to pieces. Elated by the news, the Parliament rejected the edict, and hurried from the hall to assure themselves of the fate of Law, who was the great object of their odium. The Regent took fire at this mark of their contempt for his authority, and resolved to exile the Parliament to Blois. Daguesseau himself could not excuse their precipitancy; he obtained, however, that the place of exile should not be Blois, but Pontoise, within a few leagues of Paris.

In addition to these causes of quarrel, another matter occurred to widen the breach between the court and the Parliament, and to place Daguesseau, who stood between them, in a position of still greater difficulty. This was the old question of the bull Unigenitus, the acceptance of which the prime minister Dubois was labouring to procure, as the condition on which he was to receive a Cardinal’s hat from the court of Rome. The Regent, who had at first supported the Jansenists, or Parliamentary party, was now disgusted at not finding in them the gratitude which he had hoped. “Hitherto,” said he, “I have given every thing to grace, and nothing to good works.” He leaned, in consequence, to the other party; and it was resolved to obtain the acceptance of the bull, or Constitution, as it was called, in the Great Council. The Great Council was a court of magistrates acting somewhat like the English Privy Council, or present French Conseil d’Etat, and pronouncing judgment on points where the crown or government was concerned. It was the rival of the Parliament, in the place of which Dubois proposed to substitute it as a high court of judicature; an idea acted upon at a later period of French history. The Regent, attended by his court and officers, went to the Great Council, and enforced the acceptance of the bull. Daguesseau attended as Chancellor, and by his presence seemed to countenance this act, which forms the great reproach, or blot of his life. He is reported, on this occasion, to have asked a young councillor, who was loud in opposition, “Where he had found these objections?” “In the pleadings of the late Chancellor Daguesseau,” was the keen retort. The conduct of Daguesseau admits, however, of excuse. The bull had been already registered, under conditions, by the Parliament in the reign of Louis XIV.; and the present agitation of the question being rather to satisfy the Pope than make any real alteration in the law. Daguesseau was for making every concession of form, and some real sacrifices, to avoid further extremities or hostilities against the Parliament. He hoped, indeed, that registration by the Great Council might spare the Parliament further trouble on the subject. But the Cardinal de Noailles, the head of the Jansenist party, continued to protest; and the Regent, concluding that he was incited by the Parliament, re-determined to extend the exile of that body from Pontoise to Blois. Daguesseau learning this, seeing his concessions of no effect, and that extreme measures were intended against the Parliament, came instantly to offer his resignation. The Regent, in answer, bade him wait a few days; and the Cardinal having desisted from his extreme opposition, at length he was satisfied. The Parliament was recalled, and Law finally disgraced, a point gained from Dubois, no doubt, as the price of moderation in the affair of this bull.

The Regent and Dubois had now both made all the use they required of Daguesseau’s presence in the ministry; and both were anxious to get rid of a personage so little in harmony with their politics or morals. Nevertheless, the Regent felt his obligations as well as the respect due to the Chancellor, and evinced them in a manner peculiar to himself. A person of some rank and influence had proposed for the daughter of Daguesseau, allured perhaps by the hope of being allied to a minister. The Regent learning this, determined to defer the Chancellor’s disgrace, lest it might prevent the match. When Daguesseau’s future son-in-law went to ask the Regent, as is customary in France, for his sanction to the marriage, the latter, while granting it, turned to those near him, and remarked, in a style usual with him, “Here is a gentleman about to turn fishmonger at the end of Lent,” thus intimating the Chancellor’s approaching downfall. Daguesseau had irritated Dubois by joining the Dukes and Marshals, who retired from the council table rather than yield precedence to the minister who, in his new rank of Cardinal, pretended to this honour. The seals were again taken from him in February, 1722, and he returned to his estate at Fresnes.

Again resuming the volume of his private letters, as the only history of his years of retirement, we find Daguesseau occupied with the progress of his son at the bar, and in the functions of Advocate-General. At the epoch of the Duke of Orleans’ death, and the accession of the Duke of Bourbon to the ministry, there were evident intentions of recalling Daguesseau. Recourse was had to his advice in some affairs, but he refused to take cognizance of them in a position where his word might be misrepresented. In short, he refused to take any part in political affairs without, at the same time, “having the ear of the prince,” thus positively refusing to act any subordinate part. These overtures were made at the commencement of 1725. “What you must avoid of all things,” he writes to his son, “is to do any thing that might afford cause of imagining that conditions are asked of me as the price of my return, or that I engage myself in any party.” The son was, nevertheless, anxious for the return of his father to power, and, on one occasion, entreats him to open his mansion to Mademoiselle de Clermont, sister of the Duke of Bourbon, who was travelling near Fresnes; but Daguesseau refused to pay any such expensive compliments, even to the sister of the minister.

At length, in August, 1727, not very long after the installation of Cardinal Fleury in the office of Prime Minister, Daguesseau was recalled. At the same time the seals were not given back to him, but intrusted to Chauvelin as Lord Keeper. The Parliament wished to make some resistance on this point, but Daguesseau, who, as he grew in years, seems to have grown also in reverence for the royal authority, dissuaded and silenced them. Even before his restoration to power, his advice to his son marks strongly the moderation of his views. “Never push the government to extremes,” writes he (Lettres Inédites, p. 254). “We should all feel the great distance that exists between a king and his subjects. Moderation is the most efficacious. If the Parliament take too strong a resolution, it will but justify the rigour of the government.” We no longer recognize here the bold man who withstood the threats of Louis XIV.

His character for consistency and principle suffered in consequence. In 1732, the old quarrel of ultra-montanism and Jesuits was renewed with great animosity. Some bishops and ecclesiastics resisted the Papal Bull. Those who suffered for their opposition appealed to the Parliament, who, as of old, upheld liberty of conscience, and, in connexion with it, personal freedom. Daguesseau sought to act as moderator, to calm at once the resistance of the Parliament and the rigour of the court. He was obliged, in consequence, to make himself party to some of the complaints of the one, and to some acts of persecution on the part of the other. Four of the more violent young counsellors were exiled. The high personal character of the Chancellor alone enabled him to bear up against the obloquy and reproach that were directed against him from both sides; but fortunately the storm was of short duration, for the menaces of foreign war drowned the voices of ecclesiastical and legal disputants. On the disgrace of Chauvelin, in 1737, the seals were returned to Daguesseau, who thus once more reunited in his person all the functions and honours of his place. He kept them until the year 1750, when, feeling that his infirmities rendered him incapable of performing his duty, he resigned. At the King’s request, he retained the titular dignity of Chancellor until his death, February 9, 1751.

It is hard, in a brief and popular memoir, to assign reasons for the high reputation enjoyed by Daguesseau. His celebrity is rather traditional than historical; it can be appreciated only by those skilled in the science and history of French law, by those who are acquainted with the great and innumerable ameliorations wrought in the system of law and legal proceeding by his assiduity and talents. Indeed that part of his career, which is necessarily most prominent in history, the share which he took in politics and administration, was by far the least honourable. Renowned as a pleader, his very talents in this respect are said to have unfitted him for judicial functions. “Long habits of the parquet (the office of the Attorney-General) had perverted his talents. The practice is there to collect, to examine, to weigh, and compare the reasons of two different parties; to display, in different balances, their various arguments, with all the grace and flowers of eloquence, omitting nothing on either side, so that no one could perceive to which side the Advocate-General leaned. The continual habit of this during twenty-four years, joined to the natural scruples of a conscientious man, and the ever-starting points and objections of the learned one, had moulded him into a character of incertitude, out of which he could never escape. To decide was an accouchement with him, so painful was it.” From this account by St. Simon, we learn how honourable and impartial was the office of the public accuser in the old French courts; and that he blended with his functions the high impartiality of the judge; a characteristic that the office has since lost, in that court at least. It also explains the Chancellor’s indecision, and his failure as a judge. Whatever were his defects as a decider of causes, he made amends by his talents as a legislator and an organizer of jurisprudence. To this, indeed, he gave himself up in his latter years almost exclusively, declining to meddle more with politics, and devoting himself to ameliorate the laws and the forms of procedure. It is on this subject that it is difficult to explain his merits to the reader. One of the first objects of his attention was to separate the functions of the Grand Council from those of the Parliament. When he resumed the seals in 1737, he suppressed the Judges and Presidents of the former court, to do away with its pretensions of usurping the place of the Parliament. He at the same time collected and remodelled the law of appeals, and regulated the respective jurisdiction of different courts; and we learn from Isambert, that the Ordonnance issued by him at this period still serves as the rule of law procedure before the Court of Cassation and the Council of State. The law for repressing forgery formed the subject of another long Ordonnance. The next legal subject of importance that absorbed the attention of Daguesseau was that of Entails. This forms the subject of a voluminous Ordonnance, bearing date August, 1747. One of its clauses nullifies entails extending beyond two degrees, not including the testator. An Ordonnance, signed May, 1749, not enough attended to, establishes a sinking fund for paying the debts of the state, and the levy of a twentieth to constitute it. The question of Mortmain is the subject of an Edict in the same year. Wills form another source of legal difficulties which Daguesseau sought to simplify or remove.

The character of Daguesseau has been drawn minutely, and at great length, by one of the most penetrating of his contemporaries, who sat at the council board with him, and was his most decided political enemy. Nevertheless, we need go no farther than this very writer, the Duc de St. Simon, for a record of the Chancellor’s virtues and genius:—“An infinity of talent, assiduity, penetration, knowledge of all kinds, all the gravity of a magistrate, piety and innocence of morals, formed the foundation of his character. He might be considered incorruptible (St. Simon makes an exception); and with all this, mild, good, humane, of ready and agreeable access, full of gaiety, and poignant pleasantry, without ever hurting; temperate, polished without pride, noble without a stain of avarice. Who would not imagine that such a man would have made an admirable Chancellor? Yet in this he disappointed the world.” His faults, according to the same writer, were indecision as a judge, and too high a respect for the Parliament and the legal profession, to which St. Simon asserts he sacrificed the royal authority. In this the aristocratic writer is mistaken. Daguesseau compromised too much for the independence of Parliament; it is among his faults. “He was the slave of the most precise purity of diction, not perceiving how excess of care rendered him obscure and unintelligible. His taste for science added to his other defects. He was fond of languages, especially the learned ones, and took infinite delight in physics and mathematics; nor did he even let metaphysics alone: in fact, it was for science that he was born. He would, indeed, have made an excellent First President, Chief Judge of Parliament; but he would have been best placed of all at the head of the literature of the country, of the Academies, the Observatory, the Royal College, the Libraries; there his tediousness would have incommoded no one, &c.” In short, the Duke, in his scheme of restoring the aristocracy to exclusive influence, found the Chancellor in his way, and wished him out of it. He tells us that Daguesseau was of middling stature, with a full and agreeable countenance, even to the last expressive of wisdom and of wit.

Engraved by E. Scriven.
CROMWELL.
From the Picture presented by Cromwell To Col^l. Rich,
and bequeathed by his great grandson, Sir Rob^t. Rich, Bar^t. to the British Museum.
Under the Superintendance of the Society far the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall East.

CROMWELL.

There have been few men known to history, who can be worthily compared with the subject of these pages for the extraordinary circumstances of their rise to power, or for their prudence and greatness in its enjoyment. We see in him a man of middle rank and moderate fortune, breaking out from privacy, if not obscurity, at a time of life when the fame of most men is at its meridian, of many at its close, and in a very few years raising himself to absolute power on the shoulders of his friends and on the necks of his enemies; and though we censure both the end of his political labours and the measures which led the way to it, yet in both there is much left for us to respect and to admire.

Oliver, the only son of Robert Cromwell and Elizabeth Stuart (the daughter of a knightly family in the Isle of Ely, said to have been related to the royal house), was born at Huntingdon, April 24, 1599. His grandfather, Sir Henry Cromwell, was four times Sheriff of the counties of Cambridge and Huntingdon; his uncle, Sir Oliver Cromwell, after whom he was named, was reputed to be the richest knight in England; and his family was related to the Earls of Essex, and to the houses of Hampden, St. John, and Barrington. It is necessary to mention the respectability of Cromwell’s connexions, because he is reported to have been a man of mean birth, by persons who vainly thought to fix a stigma on his great name by assigning to him a low origin.

After having received a good school education he was sent, at the age of seventeen, to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He did not remain there long enough to complete his studies, but, leaving the University before the usual time, was entered at Lincoln’s Inn. His enemies accuse him of having been guilty of all manner of debaucheries, both at college and as a student of law; but as we know that his whole life, from the age of twenty-one, was severely moral, this accusation may be allowed to rest with the obscure memories of its authors. His father dying when Oliver had attained the age of twenty, he left London, and went to reside with his mother, who eked out her small jointure with the profits of a brewery which she had established, and conducted herself: hence came the contemptuous appellation, often bestowed upon Cromwell, of the “brewer of Huntingdon.” At the age of twenty-one he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Bourchier, of the county of Essex. At this period of his life he was involved in some pecuniary difficulties, from which he was relieved by the death of his maternal uncle Sir Thomas Stuart, who bequeathed him an estate of between four and five hundred pounds yearly value in the isle of Ely, on which he took up his residence. Some of his biographers declare, “that because he prayed and expounded the word too much, and caused his servants to do the like,” he became again straitened in his circumstances. This has been the more readily believed, because he at this time became highly disgusted with the want of liberty of conscience in his own land, and had, in consequence, determined to exile himself to New England, along with his friend and cousin Hampden. He was actually embarked, when an order from the Privy Council, disallowing emigration without special license from the crown, put a stop to his voyage. He returned to his county, and was soon after elected by the burgesses of the town of Cambridge to serve them in the House of Commons. One of the first notices we have of his taking an active share in public business was his determined opposition to a plan, originated by the Earl of Bedford, and supported by government, for the drainage of the fens. His objection to this scheme was entirely of a political nature, since, during his Protectorate, it became a measure of his own. Hampden foretold his future rise from his vigorous conduct in this matter:—“He was a man who would sit well at the mark.” Cromwell was not, properly so called, an eloquent man. His ordinary speeches were rambling, verbose, and inelegant; but when he wished to make his purpose clear, his style was close, bold, and manly.

In the memorable year 1640, Cromwell was returned by the same borough to serve in the famous LONG PARLIAMENT,—the last Parliament of Charles the First. It was unfortunate for this prince that he fell on such times and such men. He came to the throne with his father’s overweening belief in the sacredness of kingly prerogative, and with the same obstinate notions concerning unity of creed and worship in matters of religion. The consequence of the first of these inherited feelings was his introduction, or rather enforcement, of unconstitutional modes of raising money, and distributing justice, beyond the patience of an age newly escaped from the thraldom of feudal restrictions; the effect of the latter was also past the endurance of a nation jealous of its lately-acquired and highly-prized religious liberty. In the struggle between the prince and the people, which these causes produced, Cromwell was among the foremost. He was one of seventy-five gentlemen who offered to raise each a troop of sixty horse in the service of the Parliament. This was the beginning of the military career which afterwards proved so glorious. He took great pains in the formation of his levies. This appears from his expostulation with Hampden, recorded by himself. “Your troops, said I, are most of them old decayed serving men and tapsters, and such kind of fellows, and their’s are gentlemen’s younger sons, and persons of good quality. And do you think that the mean spirits of such base and mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honour, and courage, and resolution in them? You must get men of a spirit, and take it not ill what I say, of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go, or else I am sure you will be beaten still: I told him so. He was a wise and worthy person, and he did think that I talked a good notion, but an impracticable one. I told him I could do somewhat in it; and I accordingly raised such men as had the fear of God before them, and made some conscience of what they did. And from that day forward they were never beaten; but, whenever they were engaged against the enemy, they beat continually.” It is probable that to this choice of his recruits, Cromwell owed much of his military success and his political fortune. Being desirous of proving their courage, he chose from among their number a few that he could put confidence in, and ordered them to lie in ambush on his route; then, at a preconcerted signal, they rushed from their hiding place as if to charge the rest of the troop, upon which the poltroons of the company fled, and, finding their mistake too late, were glad to sneak home and leave their saddles to be filled by better men. After this trial the ‘Ironsides’ of Cromwell never shrunk from the enemy, and gradually the whole army was formed on the same model.

One of Cromwell’s first military services was the securing the town and county of Cambridge to the Parliamentary interest. He treated the University, several colleges of which had transmitted plate and money for the king’s use, with severity, arresting some of its principal members. Then passing through the county he disarmed the cavalier gentlemen, taking care not to provoke enmity by personal violence. An anecdote may here be mentioned illustrative of Cromwell’s peculiar character. While on this expedition, in the Isle of Ely, he visited his uncle Sir Oliver, who was a staunch royalist. Having surrounded the house with his troop he entered, hat in hand, nor could he be prevailed on either to cover his head or to sit down in his uncle’s presence; but having begged his blessing, and besought him to set what he did to the account of strict performance of his duty, he departed, carrying with him the various weapons that the house contained, as well as all the plate and valuables.

From this time, as the cause of the commonwealth prospered, Cromwell rose rapidly in the army, soon becoming the real head of it, though nominally the second in command. When the House of Commons entered into the agreement called the self-denying ordinance, for the separation of civil and military offices, Cromwell, along with some few others, still contrived to keep both his seat in the House and his command in the army. It seems to have been a resolution of his never to give up an authority once obtained.

The first battle in which he distinguished himself particularly was that of Marston Moor, fought July 2, 1644. The parliamentary forces were driven back on one side, and even their centre wavered under the furious attack of the cavaliers; but Oliver completely changed the fortune of the day by charging, at a critical period of the battle, with his sword-arm in a sling, and “driving the enemy from before him like chaff before the whirlwind.” Throughout the war he fought no battle in which he was beaten. But while he was thus earnest in forwarding the cause in which he was engaged in the field, he did not forget to fight his private battles with fearful and envious enemies, who were alarmed at his growing power. A plot between the Lord General Essex, the Scots Commissioners, and others, was laid against him, which would have proved the ruin of most men, but by his management and decision was crushed before it had fully ripened. He was an Independent, and as such took the covenant between the Scotch and English with great reluctance. “He was a free soul in matters of faith and worship, and was desirous, before all things, that men should be allowed to serve God in their own fashion, and not be bound down to generally-established forms.”

After the loss of the decisive battle of Naseby, fought June 14, 1645, the king was glad to trust himself to any party that might be willing to receive him, rather than throw himself into the hands of the two Houses. Accordingly, he sought refuge in the Scottish camp at Newark, and the Scotch rewarded his confidence by selling him to the Parliament. The Presbyterians, who formed the majority of that assembly, hoped that they could now dispense with the army, of which they began to be afraid. This caused great discontent. A system of agitation was instituted, at which Cromwell connived; and the troops became rebellious to their employers, though they remained faithful to their leaders who seemed to have no concern in the matter. Skippon, Cromwell, Ireton, and Fleetwood were sent down by the Parliament to conciliate them, in which they were partially successful. Nevertheless the army marched towards London for the purpose of intimidating the Houses into a concession to their wishes. After this matter was concluded, the Parliament (of which at that time the majority was Presbyterian) thought fit to invite the king to Richmond, and, having agreed to their proposal, he was shortly after removed to Hampton Court, where he was kept in an honourable captivity. Being now in the power of the army, he entered into treaties both with it and with the Parliament concerning his restoration, contriving, at the same time, to play both parties false. From this period the ambition of Oliver Cromwell to govern the state without a rival or master may be safely dated. He knew and felt that he was, in power and capacity, the first man in his country. He had risen to that height by his own individual exertions; and, perhaps perceiving that the communications of Charles with the Long Parliament might be brought to an amicable close destructive of his own power, he determined on the bold strokes which followed. He accordingly contrived to entrap the king into a flight from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight, where he was placed under the care of Hammond, Governor of Carisbrook Castle. While at this place Charles kept up his correspondence with the Parliamentary and Scottish Commissioners, and also with those of the army. He moreover intrigued with the Irish party and with foreign courts for assistance. He planned an unsuccessful escape from his prison; and, to fill up the measure of distrust of him on the part of Cromwell, it was asserted that his intercepted letters to the queen hinted, in no obscure terms, at the expediency of removing the general by the method of private assassination. It became clear that there could be no hope of a cordial reconcilement or cooperation between them; and Cromwell from this time became the king’s most vigorous enemy, and spared no pains to bring him to the scaffold. The rest is well known. The king was brought to London, and refusing to plead his cause, or acknowledge the authority of his judges, was condemned and executed, January 30, 1649. Upon this the House of Commons declared the House of Peers to be useless, and that monarchy in England was at an end.

Soon after this another and a more dangerous mutiny broke out in the army, which was speedily quelled by the decision of Cromwell and the authority of Fairfax. The former was then appointed to serve in Ireland against Ormond and his supporters, who were in arms for the young king. As his presence was almost necessary in England, he resolved to perform this duty with vigour. At that time the Commonwealth had to bear the brunt of insurrections at home, the impending likelihood of a Scotch war, and the cabals of its own members. The case was urgent, and his measures were stern, arbitrary, and severe. Wanton cruelty does not appear to have been a part of Cromwell’s character; yet neither does the plea of a bold and unscrupulous policy excuse the wholesale slaughters perpetrated in that unhappy island. At the reductions of Drogheda, Wexford, Kilkenny, and Clonmel, both the avowed defenders and the citizens were slaughtered without quarter. Cromwell says, in his dispatch after the first of these sieges, “that the enemy was filled with much terror at this issue, and that he was persuaded that the bitterness used on this occasion would prevent much effusion of blood.” He added to his severities this kindness:—a proclamation was issued, “that no soldier should on pain of death take any thing from the inhabitants of conquered Ireland without paying for it, and that all should have the peaceable exercise of their religion.” In ten months’ time Cromwell was again in his seat in Parliament, having brought that country into complete subjection: a subjection bought with much blood and suffering, yet alleged by him to be better than a harassing and long-continued warfare. Lord Broghil, whom he had won over by his judicious kindness from the royalist party, was of great service to him in this campaign. He was a man of sound and temperate character, and seems to have been one of Oliver’s most faithful friends.

On his return to England he found that much remained to be done. Fairfax, as Commander-in-Chief, and Cromwell were almost immediately ordered into Scotland to stop the progress of the young Charles Stuart in that country. The Lord-General being unwilling to fight against his friends the Presbyterians, resigned his command, and Cromwell was immediately appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the English army. He prepared for service with the utmost dispatch, and marched directly to Edinburgh. Thence he fell back upon Musselburgh, the Scotch Presbyterian army being close at hand. Both parties attempted to reduce the other to extremity by want of provisions, and Cromwell made a retreat on Dunbar for the purpose of supplying his troops from the sea. His army consisted of ten thousand men; the Scotch of more than twice that number. For some time the Parliamentary army continued in a state of blockade, but by skilful manœuvring Cromwell at last induced the enemy to come down into the plain and risk the issue of a pitched battle. The moment that, looking through his glass, he saw them move, he said, “I profess they run: the Lord hath delivered them into our hands!” The Scotch were beaten with tremendous slaughter. This failure for a time seemed to have done Charles more good than harm: for it freed him from the heavy yoke of the Presbyterians, and his cause became more generally popular on that account. Another and a better army was soon collected on his behalf. Oliver allowed this second host to make a descent upon England; but following it, and harassing its rear, and gathering to himself fresh troops in his course, he finally came up with Charles at Worcester, and gained what he called, in his letter to the Parliament, “the crowning victory.” After this he returned to London, almost adored by the inhabitants of every place in his progress, and welcomed at the end of it by the sincere and earnest praises of his masters, fated soon to become his subjects.

The remainder of the Long Parliament, although sneered at and hated, were the flower of the patriots, whose energy had begun and continued the contest, and well they supported the character of able rulers to the end of their domination: but their time was come. Cromwell, finding himself in reality the most powerful man in his country, was desirous of putting the key-stone to the structure of his ambitious fortunes. Without notice of his intention, he closed up the avenues of the House of Commons, surrounded it with his soldiers, and, entering the House, upbraided the members severally with their ingratitude, besides launching at them other idle charges of a personal kind: then stamping with his foot, the signal for his soldiers who were in the lobby, “Let them come in,” he cried, and they entered. At his command they took away the mace, and forcibly removed the Speaker from his chair. Then, turning out the members, Cromwell shut up the doors, and declared the Parliament at an end. Having completed this extraordinary performance, he is said to have put the key into his pocket, and walked quietly away to his lodgings at Whitehall. After this he issued a commission for calling together a new Parliament, which proved equally unfavourable to his views of government, but finally resigned its powers into his hands.

On December 16, 1653, he was installed Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland, not daring to accept the proffered title of “King,” as it was opposed to the feelings and opinions of his most powerful friends. The first act of his reign was to make peace on honourable and advantageous terms with the Dutch: soon after he broke off a treaty with Spain, and entered into an agreement with France. In these transactions he was blamed by some, but his genius was of a stamp not to be lightly judged. The Spanish war was conducted under the captainship of Admiral Blake, whose name will ever stand in the first rank of the prudent, the daring, and the free. Judgment in the choice of men was one of Cromwell’s most peculiar talents: witness the names of Milton, Hale, and Ludlow, of Ireton, Blake, Monk, and Henry Cromwell; with a crowd of lesser men, all exactly suited to the stations in which he placed them. He concluded peace with Denmark and Sweden, dictated advantageous terms of reconciliation and alliance to Portugal, and caused the name and flag of England to be respected throughout Europe during his Protectorate. His court was grave and orderly; and as it is plain, from several passages of history, that he would willingly with the power have assumed the name and ensigns of a king, so in his mode of life he adopted something not far short of kingly state. After having tried to govern England by the unpopular Major-Generals of Districts, and by the constitutional method of Parliaments, his only obstacle to success seeming to be the want of the name and hereditary strength of royalty; after having passed through many private dangers and public difficulties, Cromwell called a third and last Parliament, and instituted a House of Peers; but before they ever met in Parliament, the Protector was seized with a quartan ague, which, after a few weeks’ illness, brought him to the grave at the age of fifty-nine years.

His reign was momentous, short, and arbitrary; yet less severe than would be supposed in the circumstances in which he placed himself. His severity was chiefly directed against the cavalier party, who never ceased to plot against his person and his power. But his vengeance, though strict, was not bloody, his punishments seldom exceeding confiscation, fine, or imprisonment. There are some instances of his packing juries, and some of his diverting the ordinary course of justice by other means. His parliaments were elected unconstitutionally; it could hardly be otherwise, when the power that brought them together was usurped and absolute. But his main object seems to have been the general happiness, virtue, and honour of his people. Few of England’s hereditary kings had governed so well or so mildly; scarcely any so bloodlessly. His prayer on his death-bed was as follows:—“Lord! I am a poor, foolish creature; this people would fain have me live; they think that it will be best for them, and that it will redound much to thy glory. All the stir is about this. Others would fain have me die. Lord, pardon them, and pardon thy foolish people; forgive their sins, and do not forsake them; but love, and bless, and bring them to a consistency, and give them rest; and give me rest, for Jesus Christ’s sake; to whom, with thyself and the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory.” He died Sept. 3, 1658, on the anniversary of his victories at Dunbar and Worcester. Some hours before his death he declared his eldest son Richard to be his successor in the Protectorate. He was buried with the pomp that became his high place, and his remains were interred amidst those of England’s kings. The empty spite of the minions of the Restoration was wreaked on his dead body, which was disinterred, hanged at Tyburn, and burnt. This was the only revenge that the courtly followers of Charles could take on the man, the terror of whose name still made them tremble.

Cromwell’s natural character was kindly and benevolent, in proof of which may be adduced the ardent love felt for him by his family, his personal friends, and his soldiers. His humanity was displayed in his toleration of religious differences of opinion, and in his earnest interference against the persecutions of the Vaudois. Those of his letters which remain, though often on subjects where a contrary feeling might have been shown, contain nothing contradictory, and much that is favourable to this opinion. His humour was wont to show itself in a rude and boisterous manner. He laughed, and joked, and even romped with his friends and officers. This, perhaps, was not done without motive; for the discovery of character was one of Cromwell’s main objects, and in the unrestrainedness of this kind of mirth the minds of many men were laid open to his view. His return from such scenes to his wonted manly and quiet dignity, destroyed the undue familiarity which might have been their consequence.

Cromwell has been called by some an enthusiast; by others, a hypocrite. Tillotson says of him, that he seems to have deceived others so long that he at last deceived himself. It would, perhaps, be more just to say, that he long deceived himself, and when that ceased, he began to deceive others. That he had a strong sense of religion there can be no doubt, inasmuch as that at one time of his life he had determined to give up his native country for the free exercise of his faith. On his death-bed he declared, that he had assuredly at one time been in a state of grace. His judgment was sound, and his mind powerful; and it is not men of this character who commonly prove self-deceivers. That he deceived others there is no doubt; but that deception was rather political than moral. He was very diligent to inspect the minds of his friends and followers, and in doing so, frequently kept his opinions and feelings in the background, the better to effect his purpose: that this can be called hypocrisy may be well doubted. He left his kingdom in a flourishing condition; respected abroad, in a good state at home, and notwithstanding the few grants of money given to him, inconsiderably in debt.

Cromwell was possessed of a robust body, and of a manly but stern and unprepossessing aspect. The picture from which our portrait is engraved was presented by him to Nathaniel Rich, then serving under him as Colonel of a regiment of horse in the Parliamentary army. It was bequeathed to the British Museum by the great-grandson of that gentleman, Lieut.-General Sir Robert Rich. The books in which the history of this period may be studied are too well known to require minute enumeration. Milton, Harris, Godwin, are favourable to Cromwell: most other writers of note have gone against him. The character given of him by Cowley is justly celebrated.

[Central Group from West’s Picture of the Dissolution of the Long Parliament.]

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.
LEONARDO DA VINCI.
After a Picture by himself engraved by
Raffaelle Morghen.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall East.

LION. DA VINCI.

Two centuries elapsed from Cimabue to Lionardo da Vinci. The most distinguished artists in this interval were Giotto, who immediately followed Cimabue, and Masaccio, who immediately preceded Lionardo; but, although we can trace a gradual improvement from the infancy of Tuscan art to the surprising works of Masaccio, in the Chiesa del Carmine, at Florence, (works which afterwards Raffaelle himself did not disdain to imitate,) the appearance of Lionardo may be justly considered the commencement of a new æra. Vasari, who composed his lives of the painters when the most excellent specimens of the art had been recently produced, emphatically calls the style of Giorgione, Titian, Correggio, and Raffaelle, “the modern manner,” as opposed to that of Mantegna, Signorelli, and others, and still more to that of Lippi, Giovanni da Fiesole, and the earlier masters. Of this “modern manner,” Lionardo da Vinci was the inventor. His chiaro-scuro is to be traced in the magic and force of Correggio and Giorgione; his delicate and accurate delineation of character, and his sweetness of expression, reappear in Raffaelle; while, in anatomical knowledge and energetic design, he is the precursor of Michael Angelo; but we should look in vain for the teacher from whom he derived these excellences. The original genius, of which this affords so striking a proof, was apparent in every thing to which he applied his mind; and not only every art, but almost every science that was studied in his time, seems to have engaged his attention. He was conversant in chemistry, geometry, anatomy, botany, mechanics, astronomy, and optics; and there is scarcely a subject which he touched in which he did not, in more or less important points, anticipate the discoveries of later philosophers. With these astonishing powers of mind, he possessed great personal beauty and a captivating eloquence; the first musician of his time, and an accomplished improvisatore, he excelled besides in all manly exercises, and was possessed of uncommon strength. This extraordinary man was born at Vinci, a small burgh, or castle, of Val d’Arno di Sotto, in the year 1452. He was the son of one Piero, a notary of the Signoria of Florence. His father, who had at first intended to educate him for a mercantile life, having noticed his wonderful capacity and his particular fondness for drawing, placed him with Andrea Verocchio, originally a sculptor, but who, with the versatility of his age, was occasionally a designer and painter.

Vasari relates, that Verocchio being occupied on a picture of the Baptism of Christ, Lionardo was permitted to paint an accessory figure of an angel in the same work. Verocchio, perceiving that his own performance was manifestly surpassed by that of his young scholar, abandoned the art in despair, and never touched a pencil again. Although Lionardo thus excelled his master while a boy, and soon enlarged the boundaries of the art, it is justly observed by Lanzi that he retained traces of the manner and even general tastes of Verocchio all his life. Like his master, he studied geometry with ardour; he was fonder of design than painting: in his choice of form, whether of face or limb, he preferred the elegant to the full. From Verocchio too he derived his fondness for drawing horses and composing battles, and from him imbibed the wish to advance his art by doing a few things well, rather than to multiply his works. Verocchio was an excellent sculptor; in proof of which the S. Tommaso at Or San Michele, in Florence, and the equestrian statue before S. Giovanni e Paolo, in Venice, may be adduced. Lionardo modelled the three statues, cast in bronze by Il Rustici, for S. Giovanni at Florence, and the colossal equestrian statue of the first Francesco Sforza, (destroyed by the French before it was cast,) at Milan. To his knowledge of sculpture must be also greatly attributed that roundness and relief which he infused into many of his pictures, and which had hitherto been wanting in the art. To this period of Lionardo’s life belong the Medusa’s head, now in the Florence gallery; the cartoon of Adam and Eve; a Madonna, once in the Borghese palace in Rome, known by the accompaniment of a crystal vase of flowers; a triumph of Neptune; and other works mentioned by Vasari. Some of the feebler pictures ascribed to him in Rome and Florence may also belong to this time. His genius for mechanics had already manifested itself: he invented machines for sinking wells, and lifting and drawing weights; proposed methods for boring mountains, cleansing ports, and digging canals. His architectural schemes too were numerous and daring: with the boldness of an Archimedes, he offered to lift the Baptistery, or church of S. Giovanni, in the air, and build under it the basement and steps which were wanting to complete the design. It does not appear that his fellow-citizens availed themselves of these powers in any memorable work; but his plan for rendering the Arno navigable seems to have been adopted two centuries afterwards by Viviani.

Lionardo remained at Florence till about the age of thirty, after which we find him at Milan, in the service of Lodovico Sforza, known by the name of Lodovico il Moro. The artist’s residence at the court of this prince, from 1482 to 1499,[^[2]] may be considered the most active and the most glorious period of his life. Lodovico il Moro, whatever may have been his character as a potentate and as a man, certainly gave great encouragement to literature and the arts, and the universal genius of Lionardo was in all respects calculated for the restless enterprise of the time. A letter is preserved, addressed by him to Lodovico Sforza, in answer to that prince’s first invitation, (and it is sufficient to disprove Vasari’s story, that the artist recommended himself by his performance on the lute,) in which he gives a list of such of his qualifications as might be serviceable to the Duke. After an account of new inventions in mining operations and gunnery, with a description of bridges, scaling ladders, and “infinite things for offence,” in the tenth and last item, he professes competent knowledge of architecture and hydrostatics, confident that he can “give equal satisfaction in time of peace;” and adds, “I will also execute works of sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay; in painting too I will do what is possible to be done, as well as any other man, whoever he may be.” All his powers were put in requisition by the Duke of Milan. The warlike habits of the sovereigns of Italy at this time rendered the science and services of the engineer particularly useful, and Lionardo was constantly inventing arms and machinery for attack and defence. He was engaged in the architecture of the cathedral; he superintended all the pageants and masques, then so commonly conducted with splendour and taste in the Italian courts, and in some of which his knowledge of mechanics produced almost magical effects; he improved the neighbourhood of the Ticino by canals and irrigation, and attempted to render the Adda navigable between Brivio and Trezzo. The colossal equestrian statue before-mentioned occupied him, at intervals, for many years; want of means alone, it seems, prevented the Duke from commissioning him to cast it in bronze. The model existed till the invasion of Milan by Louis XII., in 1499, when it was broken to pieces by his Gascons.

[2]. The erroneous dates of Vasari have been corrected in this particular by Amoretti.

As the founder of the Milanese Academy, the first, in all probability, established in Italy, Lionardo composed his Treatise on Painting; which Annibale Carracci declared would have saved him twenty years of study had he known it in his youth. This work was first published in Paris, in 1651, by Raffaelle Dufresne, and was illustrated with engravings from drawings by N. Poussin, with some additions by Errard. The drawings of Poussin were in a MS. copy, which belonged to the Cavaliere del Pozzo. To this last object were directed the studies of Lionardo in optics, perspective, anatomy, libration, and proportion. In this active period of his life also were composed the numerous MS. books, explained by designs, which appear to have comprised specimens of the whole range of his vast knowledge. Thirteen of these books became the property of the Melzi family of Milan, on the death of Lionardo. The history and vicissitudes of these interesting works cannot now be accurately traced. The documents and observations of Dufresne, Mariette, and others, have been collected by Rogers, in his “Imitations of Drawings by the Old Masters.” Six or seven books, which cannot be accounted for after having been collected by one Pompeo Leoni, are supposed to have become the property of Philip II. of Spain. Some of the remaining volumes, augmented by less voluminous MSS. of Lionardo, were presented to the Ambrosian Library by Galeazzo Arconato. The inscription which records this donation, in 1637, states, that Arconato had been offered 3000 pistoles of gold by a king of England, (probably Charles I., and not James I., as Addison, Wright, and latterly Amoretti, suppose,) but which he, Arconato, “regio animo,” had refused. Another volume was presented to the Ambrosian Library by its founder, the Cardinal Borromeo; and Amoretti states, that another, containing drawings relating to hydrostatics, was sold “al Signor Smith, Inglese.” The whole of the MSS. of Lionardo, preserved in the Ambrosian Library, were taken from Milan to Paris, in 1796. A large folio volume of Lionardo’s Drawings, collected by the above-mentioned Pompeo Leoni, is in this country, in His Majesty’s collection. On its cover is inscribed, “Disegni di Lionardo da Vinci, restaurati da Pompeo Leoni:” it contains 779 drawings, various in subject and execution; the most remarkable are, perhaps, some accurate anatomical drawings. The whole are illustrated, like the contents of his other books, by notes written with his left hand, which can only be read through a glass. This volume was discovered, at the bottom of a large chest, about sixty years ago, by Mr. Dalton, the librarian of George III.; and in the same chest were Holbein’s drawings of the principal personages of the court of Henry VIII. It is supposed that they were placed there for security by Charles I., who retained a sincere love for the arts even in his misfortunes.

Lionardo’s works in painting during his residence in Milan were by no means numerous, owing to the quantity and variety of his occupations. The portraits of Cecilia Gallerani and Lucrezia Crivelli, done in the earlier part of this period, received unbounded praises from the poets of the day. A picture of the Virgin and Child, St. John, and St. Michael, now in the possession of the Sanvitali family of Parma, is dated 1492. The portraits of Lodovico Sforza, his wife and family, were painted on the wall of the refectory in the Convent delle Grazie, where the Last Supper was afterwards painted. These portraits faded, owing to the damp of the wall, soon after they were done. Other works, in the same place, are mentioned by some writers as having been done on canvass, but they all perished from the same cause. A colossal Madonna, painted on a wall at the villa of Vaprio, belonging to the Melzi family, still exists, but it was much injured during the last occupation of Milan by the French. The paintings on the walls of the castle of Milan were destroyed by invaders of the same nation, in 1499. Various portraits, and a half figure of St. John, are preserved in the Ambrosian Library.

In 1496, Lionardo began his greatest work, the Last Supper, in the refectory of the Convent delle Grazie: it was painted on the wall in oil, to which circumstance Lanzi, and others who have followed him, attribute its premature decay. But had it been in fresco, it would probably have suffered as much, since that part of Milan, where the convent stands, has frequently been subject to inundations; and so late as 1800, the floor, or rather ground, of the refectory, was several feet under water for a considerable time. The walls have thus been never free from damp: fifty years only after the picture was painted, Armenini describes it as half decayed. Vasari found it indistinct and faded. Later writers speak of it as a ruined work; and in 1652, the friars of the convent showed how worthless it was considered, by cutting a door through the wall, and thus destroyed the lower extremities of some of the figures. In 1726, a painter, named Bellotti, was unfortunately commissioned to restore it, and it appears that he almost covered the work of Lionardo with his own. The dampness, however, soon reduced the whole to its former faded state; and the next restorer, one Mazza, in 1770, actually scraped the wall (from which the original colour was chipping) to have a smooth surface to paint on, and even passed a coat of colour over the figures before he began his operations. Three heads were saved from his retouchings; but it must be evident that very little of the original work can be visible in any part. Bonaparte ordered that the place should not be put to military uses; but his commands were not attended to in his absence, and the refectory was long used as a stable. The building however was finally repaired, and, as far as possible, secured from damp. Fortunately numerous copies were made from this painting soon after it was done, and one of the best, by Marco de Oggiono, or Uggione, a scholar of Lionardo, is in this country, in the Royal Academy, where is also preserved a cartoon of the Virgin and St. Anne, by Da Vinci himself. Uggione’s copy, from which the print by Frey was taken, is nearly the size of the original; it was, however, enlarged from a smaller copy, so that it cannot be considered very accurate. The head of the Christ is inferior even to the ruins of Lionardo’s work; and it may here be observed, that when Vasari says this head was declared unfinished by the painter, the imperfection is to be understood in the same sense in which Virgil spoke of the incompleteness of the Æneid. Two series of original studies for the heads in this picture are in this country; the greater part of one series is in the possession of Messrs. Woodburn. The print by Morghen was done from drawings taken from the original painting.

After the fall of Lodovico il Moro, in 1500, Lionardo returned to Florence, where he remained thirteen years, occasionally revisiting Milan. Among his first works done in Florence, at this time, Vasari names the above-mentioned cartoon of the Madonna and Child, St. Anne, and the Infant St. John, and a portrait of Genevra Benci. At this period too he produced the celebrated portrait of Mona, or Madonna Lisa, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. This was the labour of four years, and this too, Vasari says, was left at last imperfect. We may thus understand the meaning of the expression, as applied to the head of the Christ in the Last Supper. The portrait of Mona Lisa, now in the Louvre, is most highly wrought, although it by no means agrees with the absurd encomiums of Vasari, who almost leads his reader to believe that the hair of the eyebrows and pores of the skin are perceptible, whereas the execution resembles rather the broad softness of Correggio. His next work was the celebrated cartoon, of which the composition known by the name of the Battle of the Standard was a part only. The subject was the defeat of Nicolo Piccinino, the general of Filippo Maria Visconti, by the Florentines, near Anghiara, in Tuscany, in the year 1440. This was to have been painted in the Council Hall, at Florence, in competition with Michael Angelo, whose rival work was the celebrated composition known by the name of the Cartoon of Pisa. Lionardo’s attempt to paint in oil on the wall failed in this instance, even in the commencement, and the picture was never done. The large cartoon disappeared, but a drawing for a part of it was preserved, which was published in the Etruria Pittrice, and the same group was engraved by Edelinch, from a copy, or rather free imitation, by Rubens. To this period belong also his own portrait in the Ducal Gallery, at Florence; the half figure of a nun, in the Nicolini Palace; the Madonna, receiving a lily from the infant Christ; the Vertumnus and Pomona, miscalled Vanity and Modesty, in the Sciarra Palace at Rome; a holy family, now in Russia; the supposed portrait of Joan of Naples, in the Doria Palace; and the Christ among the Doctors, formerly in the Aldobrandini Palace at Rome. His numerous imitators render, however, all decision as to the originality of some of these works doubtful; and the last-mentioned picture, now in the National Gallery, has been thought, by more than one writer, to have been, at least in part, painted by his scholars. A portrait of the celebrated Captain, Giangiacomo Triulzio, may have been painted in one of Lionardo’s short visits to Milan. For a fuller list of his works, Amoretti, and the authors he quotes, may be referred to.

In 1514, after the defeat of the French at Novara, Lionardo, being then at Milan, left that city for Rome, passing through Florence. His stay in Rome was short. Pope Leo X. seems to have been prejudiced against him by the friends of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle, and was displeased at his dilatory, or rather desultory habits. From the notes of Lionardo himself, collected by Amoretti, it appears that, while in Rome, he improved the machinery for the coinage; but the only certain painting of his done at this time is a votive picture on the wall of a corridor in the Convent of S. Onofrio.

Francis I., who succeeded Louis XII. in 1515, having reconquered the Milanese, Lionardo again repaired to Milan, and once more superintended a pageant, in this instance intended to celebrate the triumph of the king after the victory of Marignano. Francis, having in vain attempted to remove the painting of the Last Supper from Milan to Paris, desired, at least, to have the painter near him. Lionardo accepted the invitation, and afterwards accompanied his new patron to France. This being little more than two years before the death of Lionardo, and as he was occupied in planning canals in the department of the Cher et Loire, he painted nothing, although the king repeatedly invited him to execute his cartoon of the Virgin and St. Anne, which was afterwards painted by Luini. His usual residence in France was at Cloux, a royal villa near Amboise, in Touraine, where he died, May 2, 1519. The story of his having expired in the arms of Francis I., which, as Bossi observes, does more honour to the monarch than to the artist, appears to be without foundation. Francesco Melzi, who wrote an account of Lionardo’s death from Amboise soon after it happened, not only does not mention the circumstance, but was the first, according to Lomazzo, to inform the king himself of the artist’s decease; and Venturi has ascertained, that on the day of Lionardo’s death the court was at St. Germain en Laye. He was buried in the church of St. Florent, at Amboise, but no memorial exists to mark the place; and it is supposed that his monument, together with many others, was destroyed in the wars of the Hugonots.

The accounts given of Lionardo da Vinci by Vasari, Lomazzo, and the older writers, were repeated by Dufresne, De Piles, Felibien, and others. The more recent and accurate researches of Amoretti, prefixed to Lionardo’s Trattato della Pittura, in the thirty-third volume of the “Classici Italiani;” of Bossi, “Del Cenacolo di Lionardo da Vinci;” and of Venturi, “Essai sur les Ouvrages Physico-Mathématiques de Léonard da Vinci, avec des fragmens tirés de ses manuscrits apportés de l’Italie;” may be consulted for further particulars respecting the life and works of this great man.

[Group from the Battle of the Standard.]

Engraved by W. T. Fry.
VAUBAN.
From an original Picture by Lebrun
in the War Office at Paris.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

VAUBAN.

Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban, son of Albin le Prestre and Aimée Carmagnol, was born May 1, or, by other accounts, May 15, 1633, at St. Leger-de-Foucheret, a small village between Saulieu and Avallon, in the province of Burgundy. He became an orphan at an early age, his father having lost both his life and fortune in the public service. Under the protection and instruction of M. de Fontaines, prior of St. John at Semur, he acquired some knowledge of geometry, a science then but little cultivated among military men. At seventeen years of age he deserted his home, and entered as a volunteer in the regiment of Condé, then employed in the Spanish service, in which his zeal and abilities soon procured him a commission. Nor was it long before he showed his talent for the science of engineering. In 1652 he was employed in the erection of the fortifications of Clermont, in Lorraine; and the same year, serving at the first siege of S^te. Menehould, he made several lodgments, and during the assault swam the river under the enemy’s fire. Public notice was taken of this exploit; and by this means Vauban’s family heard, for the first time, that he had embraced the military profession. In 1653 he was taken prisoner by a French corps, and conducted to Cardinal Mazarin, who thought it worth while to purchase his services with a lieutenancy in the regiment of Bourgogne. In the same year he served as an engineer under the Chevalier de Clerville, at the second siege of S^te. Menehould; and the charge of repairing the fortifications of that town, when retaken by the troops of Louis XIV., was confided to him.

In May, 1655, Vauban received his commission as engineer, and in the following year he was rewarded for his services with the command of a company in the regiment of the Maréchal de la Ferté. Not to mention the numerous situations in which he bore an active but subordinate part, we proceed at once to the year 1658, in which he had the chief direction of the sieges of Gravelines, Ypres, and Oudenarde; where, being free to act on his own opinions, yet still doubting his strength, he showed, by judicious though slight innovations, what might be ultimately expected from his matured experience. He was also charged with the improvement of the port and fortifications of Dunkerque, on the surrender of that once important place to France by the treaty of October 17, 1662.

When the war with Spain was renewed in 1667, Vauban had the principal direction of the sieges at which Louis XIV. presided in person. At Douay he received a musket-wound in his cheek, the scar of which is preserved by Coisevox and Lebrun in his bust and portraits. The capture of Lille, after only nine days of open trenches, procured for him a lieutenancy in the Guards and a pension, accompanied with the far more gratifying commendations of his sovereign. Hostilities were ended by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1668, in which year he prepared designs for the citadel of Lille, for Ath, and several other places; and in 1669 the king appointed him governor of the citadel of Lille, the first reward of this description created in France.

Soon after the peace Vauban accompanied the minister Louvois on a mission to the Duke of Savoy, and furnished plans for the fortifications of Verrue, Verceil, and the citadel of Turin. Returning to Flanders, the works of Dunkerque were prosecuted under his immediate direction with unexampled activity. Three corps of 10,000 men relieved each other daily, every four hours, proceeding from the camp with their arms, and resuming them on the completion of their task. In the midst of these labours he prepared his first work on the attack of fortresses, for the instruction of Louvois, pointing out in it many of the errors committed in former sieges, and proposing remedies for them.

The war with Holland, which commenced in 1672, afforded Vauban many opportunities of displaying his superior abilities. Louis again took the field in person; and again Vauban had the principal direction of the sieges of which the king was a spectator. Previous to the siege of Maestricht, in 1673, the regular method of assaulting a fortified place was to excavate a trench parallel to the general contour of the fortress, and from batteries erected near it to fire indiscriminately on the works and the town. On this occasion Vauban introduced three parallel trenches, connected by oblique or zigzag approaches, which enabled him to place large bodies of infantry near the head of his attack, each successive parallel more closely shutting in the garrison, and restraining their offensive operations.

In 1674 Vauban was promoted to the rank of Brigadier. In the following year he had the magnanimity to second with his recommendation the ineffectual application made by his rival, Coehorn, for employment by the French government.

In 1676 Vauban’s services were rewarded with the rank of Major-General; and in 1677 the mode of attack adopted at Maestricht was perfected at Valenciennes, where the fronts attacked were completely shut in by the parallels, the flanks of which rested on the Scheldt and the marsh of Bourlin.

At this siege it was determined to assault an earthen crown-work, and Vauban proposed to make the attack during the day. Five Marshals of France, Louvois, Monsieur, and even the king himself, opposed this advice. Vauban was immoveable; he maintained that it was the only way to avoid confusion and mistakes, to surprise the enemy, and to overpower him by opposing fresh troops to his wearied garrison. “Night,” said he, “has no shame! Open day and the eye of the commander restrain the cowardly, animate the feeble, and add fresh courage to the brave.” The king at length yielded to his arguments. The enemy was found, as he had predicted, harassed with watching, sleeping, or absent in the fortress seeking provisions. The crown-work, and a ravelin which served as an interior intrenchment, were successively carried. The enemy, retreating into the Paté, an extensive irregular work covering the place, was promptly pursued. Four grenadiers got possession of a sally port, while others entered by a subterraneous passage. The besieged fled into the body of the place, and raised the bridge. An immediate and vigorous assault soon placed the disputed works in the possession of the assailants, who, pushing forward to the canal which traverses the city, intrenched themselves in the houses bordering it. They were strongly and speedily supported, and thus the place was taken at a single assault, justifying Vauban’s advice, even beyond his most sanguine expectations. His services on this occasion were rewarded with a gratuity of 25,000 crowns.

Cambray was besieged next. The town surrendered after a few nights of open trenches. The citadel was then attacked. Du Metz proposed assaulting the ravelin: Vauban opposed this counsel, representing that the strength of the work, and the vigour of the defence, prescribed an attack en règle. “Sire,” said he to the king, “you will lose some one who is of more value than the ravelin.” The success at Valenciennes inspired the troops with temerity: assault was given, the ravelin was carried, and a lodgment in it was commenced; but the enemy brought a heavy fire to bear on the work and its approaches, and then sallying forth speedily drove back the assailants. Du Metz reproached Parisot, the engineer who traced the lodgment, with having caused the failure of the attack. Vauban however insisted that the work was lost, not through any vice in the lodgment, but because the assault could not be sufficiently supported. The siege was then proceeded with in the ordinary manner, and the ravelin secured with the loss of five men only. “I will believe you another time,” said the king to Vauban, and he kept his word. A practicable breach being made, Louis expressed his intention of giving no quarter to the three thousand men who formed the garrison, and had so vigorously defended themselves. Vauban alone ventured to oppose his views, representing that such conduct was contrary to the usages of warfare among civilized nations; that the place would be taken, but would cost more bloodshed; and, “Sire,” he added, “I would rather have preserved 100 soldiers to your majesty than have deprived the enemy of 3000.”

Vauban succeeded to the Chevalier de Clerville, as Commissary-General of the Fortifications of France, in December, 1677. In 1678 he received the congratulations of Colbert on the success attending the execution of his projects for the improvement of the Port of Dunkerque, which, having been previously used only by fishermen, was now made accessible to vessels carrying forty guns. It would be useless to reckon all the labours of this part of his life: the fortifications of Maubeuge, Thionville, Sarre-Louis, Phalzbourg, Béfort, and the citadel of Strasburg, were among the new works projected by him, while all the principal ports and fortifications of France were more or less improved by his master-hand.

The war of 1683 contributed to the increase of Vauban’s reputation. The siege of Luxemburg, in 1684, was carried on under his direction; and he here displayed an admirable presence of mind when discovered one evening by the enemy, in reconnoitring the works of the place. He instantly made a signal to them not to fire, and, instead of retreating, advanced towards them; they mistook him for one of their own officers, and having skirted the glacis, he retired slowly without exciting further suspicion. After having surmounted the many difficulties presented by the nature of the ground over which the attack was necessarily carried, the assailants attained the covered way. To drive the enemy out of its long branches, Vauban caused elevated parapets to be constructed on their prolongations, whence a plunging musketry-fire was thrown into the covered way, and the mass of its defenders were compelled to retreat; the few who remained concealed behind the traverses being gradually dislodged, as the crowning of the covered way was extended along the crest of the glacis. This siege was remarkable both for the difficulties which were overcome, and for the improvements made in the method of conducting an attack and protecting the troops employed in it.

The new fortresses of Mont-Royal, Landau, and Fort Louis, together with extensive projects for the improvement of the canal of Languedoc, formed part of Vauban’s labours during the truce of Ratisbon. He likewise prepared a general project for the improvement and defence of all the ports, roadsteads, and coasts of France. To his exertions the French are indebted for the first general statistical account of their country, he having caused blank forms to be prepared and printed, which he distributed, to be filled up by the several intendants, governors, and other public functionaries with whom his frequent journeys through the country in the execution of his ordinary duties brought him acquainted. Louis XIV. afterwards caused these returns to be made generally throughout France.

The war of 1688 commenced with the siege of Philisbourg, where the Dauphin commanded in person, and Vauban directed the attacks. He here tried the effect of firing en ricochet, of which he was the original proposer. The superiority of this method of attack was not so decisively shown in this first instance as on subsequent occasions: still it proved so far effectual in subduing the fire of the town, as to cause its surrender after twenty-four days of open trenches. The Duc de Montausier said in a letter to the Dauphin, “I do not offer you my congratulation on the fall of Philisbourg: you had a good army, mortars, guns, and Vauban.” On the same occasion, Louis XIV. wrote thus to the successful engineer:—“You know, long since, in what estimation I hold you, and the confidence I have both in your knowledge and affection. Believe that I do not forget the services you render me, and that I am particularly pleased with your conduct at Philisbourg. If you reciprocate the feelings of my son you must be on the best of terms, for I feel assured that he, equally with myself, knows how to esteem and value you. I cannot conclude without earnestly recommending you to preserve yourself for the benefit of my service.”

Manheim and Franckenthal were next besieged and taken. On the surrender of the latter, the Dauphin presented Vauban with four pieces of artillery, to be selected by him from the arsenals of the conquered fortresses, to ornament his chateau of Bazoches. He was this year promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General. The difficulty with which the obstacles presented at the siege of Philisbourg were overcome, induced Vauban to renew, with greater earnestness, his project for the formation of a corps of sappers, originally suggested shortly after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. Louvois, though he yielded to Vauban’s arguments in favour of this new force, postponed its formation, and subsequent events prevented his adding this to the other establishments which he created.

When the reverses suffered by the French armies in 1689, the disordered finances, and the exhausted resources of the kingdom, had reduced Louis XIV. to the greatest difficulties, Vauban alone had courage to propose the re-establishment of the edict of Nantes. In a manuscript addressed to Louvois, he says, “Forcible conversions, and the belief that they yield no faith to sacraments, the profanation of which they make a jest, have inspired an universal horror of the conduct of the clergy. If it is resolved to proceed, either the new Protestants must be exterminated as rebels, or banished as madmen: both execrable projects, opposed to every Christian virtue, dangerous to religion itself; for persecution propagates sects, as was proved when, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, a new census showed that the Protestants had increased in number not less than 110,000.” He proposed, therefore, to re-establish, purely and simply, the edict of Nantes; to restore all civil rights to the Protestants and their clergy; to recall the one from exile; to deliver the others from the galleys; to leave their consciences free; and to permit the re-opening and rebuilding of their places of worship.

After the fall of Mons, in 1691, Vauban greatly strengthened that fortress; placing outworks in the marshes, inaccessible to an enemy, and seeing in reverse all the points of attack.

In 1692 Vauban directed the operations of the siege of Namur, where Coehorn commanded the stronghold of Fort William. The army watched with eagerness this struggle between the rival engineers, one of whom defended his own work. Fort William was soon taken, and the triumph rested with Vauban. The order of St. Louis, the first restricted to the reward of military distinction, was instituted before the campaign of 1693. It is said to have been suggested by Vauban, who was one of the seven Grand Crosses named at its creation.

In 1693 he conducted, with his usual skill, the siege of Charleroi, a place which he had fortified, and of which he might well be supposed to know the weakest points; yet it was confidently believed among the besiegers that their celebrated engineer had at last made a mistake, in having selected the strongest fronts as points of attack. Vauban soon convinced them of their error, by the capture of Charleroi.

The system of ricochet firing, devised at Philisbourg, and employed with various success at subsequent sieges, was fully developed at the siege of Ath, in 1697, when Vauban placed his first batteries in the second parallel with such good effect as to reduce the place to surrender after only three days of open trenches.

During the peace of Ryswick, Vauban made a tour of the northern frontiers, in which he was occupied three years, preparing projects for canals and various other public works, as well as for the improvement of existing and the construction of new fortresses; among others, of Neuf-Brisach, his last work, in which he improved on his system of tower bastions, previously applied at Béfort and Landau. In 1699 he was elected an honorary member of the French Academy; and, January 2, 1703, was promoted to the rank of Marshal of France; a dignity which he modestly wished to decline, lest it might, at a future period, deprive him of the opportunity of serving his country.

In the autumn of 1703 Vieux-Brisach was besieged by the army under the orders of the Duc de Bourgogne, who is reported to have thus addressed Vauban:—“Monsieur Maréchal, you must lose your honour before this place: for either we shall take it, and if so, they will say you have fortified it badly; or we shall fail, and they will then say that you have ill assisted me.” “Monseigneur,” replied Vauban, “it is already known how I have fortified Brisach; they have yet to learn how you will take the places I have fortified.” The siege lasted only thirteen days, and was the last at which Vauban served. The following year he presented to the Duc de Bourgogne his treatise on the Attack of Fortresses, first published at the Hague by Pierre Dehoult, in 1737.

When Turin was attacked, in 1706, M. de la Feuillade rejected the project of attack submitted by Vauban, and the result was, that a perfect investment was not completed until after three months’ fighting. Louis XIV., annoyed at the duration of the siege, and at the progress of Prince Eugene, sent for Vauban, who, after pointing out the faults of the attack, offered to give his assistance as a volunteer. “Recollect,” said the king, “that this employment is beneath your dignity.” “Sire,” replied Vauban, “my dignity consists in serving my country. I will leave my baton at the door, and perhaps may assist M. de la Feuillade in taking the city.” La Feuillade refused the proffered aid, lest he should have to share with Vauban the honour of taking Turin: an honour, however, which he did not acquire, being forced to raise the siege after ninety-seven days of open trenches.

From the period of Vauban’s promotion to the dignity of Marshal of France, his active labours in the public service were necessarily much less numerous; much of his time being devoted to the arrangement of his numerous memoranda, projects, &c., a compilation extending to twelve volumes, entitled ‘Mes Oisivetés,’ of which however seven volumes are lost. In 1706, after the battle of Ramillies, he was sent to command at Dunkerque, and on the coast of Flanders, where, by his presence, he reassured the timid, and prevented the destruction of a tract of land which it was proposed to inundate, in order to avert an attack on Dunkerque. This he did more effectually by forming an entrenched camp between that place and Borgues.

The imperfect defence of several of the fortresses of France during the same campaign induced him to commence a treatise on the defence of fortresses, which he did not live to complete.

The Duc de St. Simon affirms that Vauban’s days were shortened by chagrin, at having displeased his sovereign by the publication of his scheme of taxation, entitled Dixme Royale, and that Louis XIV. was so much offended as to be indifferent to the loss of a man beloved by his countrymen, and celebrated throughout Europe. According to Dangeau, on the contrary, so soon as Louis heard of Vauban’s illness, he sent his principal physician to attend him. Fontenelle distinctly states that his death, which took place March 30, 1707, was occasioned by an inflammation of the lungs.

An authorized edition of Vauban’s treatise on the Attack and Defence of Fortresses was published, in 1829, by M. le Baron de Valazé. His other works principally consisted of projects for the defence and improvement of France, and many of them are preserved in the depôt, of fortifications, and in the collection of M. de Rosambo. A list of Vauban’s works may be found in the notes to ‘L’Histoire du Corps Impérial du Génie, par A. Allent,’ the best authority for an account of his labours; the Eloges of Fontenelle and Carnot may also be consulted. Honest, independent, humane, Vauban is characterised by Voltaire as the “first of engineers and best of citizens.” The industry of his life may be estimated from the calculation that he improved, more or less, three hundred fortified or trading places, built thirty-three new fortresses, conducted fifty-three sieges, and was present in a hundred and fifty actions, greater or less.

Engraved by W. Holl.
WILLIAM III.
From a Picture by Netscher in the
possession of the Publisher.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall East.

WILLIAM III.

William, Prince of Orange, the third King of England of that name, born November 14, 1650, was the posthumous son of William II., Prince of Orange, and Mary Stuart, daughter of Charles I. of England. The fortunes of his childhood did not promise that greatness which he attained. His father had been thought to entertain designs hostile to the liberties of the United Provinces, and the suspicions of the father produced distrust of the son. When Cromwell dictated terms of peace to the Dutch in 1654, one of the articles insisted on the perpetual exclusion of the Prince of Orange from all the great offices formerly held by his family; and this sentence of exclusion was confirmed, so far as Holland was concerned, thirteen years after, by the enactment of the Perpetual Edict, by which the office of Stadtholder of Holland was for ever abolished. The Restoration of the Stuarts, however, was so far favourable to the interests of the House of Orange, as to induce the princess-royal to petition, on her son’s behalf, that he might be invested in the offices and dignities possessed by his ancestors. The provinces of Zealand, Friesland, and Guelderland warmly espoused her cause: even the States of Holland engaged to watch over his education, “that he might be rendered capable of filling the posts held by his forefathers.” They formally adopted him as “a child of the state,” and surrounded him with such persons as were thought likely to educate him in a manner suited to his station in a free government.

A storm broke upon Holland just as William was ripening into manhood; and discord at home threatened to aggravate the misfortunes of the country. The House of Orange had again become popular; and a loud cry was raised for the instant abolition of the Perpetual Edict, and for installing the young prince in all the offices enjoyed by his ancestors. The Republican party, headed by the De Witts, prevented this; but they were forced to yield to his being chosen Captain-General and High-Admiral. Many persons hoped that William’s military rank and prospects would incline his uncle Charles II. to make common cause with the friends of liberty and independence; but the English monarch was the pensioner of the French king, and France and England jointly declared war against the States, April 7, 1672. The Dutch made large preparations; but new troops could not suddenly acquire discipline and experience. The enemy meditated, and had nearly effected, the entire conquest of the country: the populace became desperate; a total change of government was demanded; the De Witts were brutally massacred; and William was invested with the full powers of Stadtholder. His fitness for this high office was soon demonstrated by the vigour and the wisdom of his measures. Maestricht was strongly garrisoned; the Prince of Orange, with a large army, advanced to the banks of the Issel; the Dutch fleet cruised off the mouth of the Thames, to prevent the naval forces of England and France from joining. The following year, 1673, Louis XIV. took Maestricht; while the Prince of Orange, not having forces sufficient to oppose the French army, employed himself in retaking other towns from the enemy. New alliances were formed; and the prince’s masterly conduct not only stopped the progress of the French, but forced them to evacuate the province of Utrecht. In 1674 the English Parliament compelled Charles II. to make peace with Holland. The Dutch signed separate treaties with the Bishop of Munster and the Elector of Cologne. The gallantry of the prince had so endeared him to the States of Holland, that the offices of Stadtholder and Captain-General were declared hereditary in his male descendants. Meanwhile he continued to display both courage and conduct in various military operations against the French. The battle of Seneffe was desperately fought. After sunset, the conflict was continued by the light of the moon; and darkness, rather than the exhaustion of the combatants, put an end to the contest, and left the victory undecided. The veteran Prince of Condé gave a candid and generous testimonial to the merit of his young antagonist: “The Prince of Orange,” said he, “has in every point acted like an old captain, except in venturing his life too much like a young soldier.”

In 1675 the sovereignty of Guelderland and of the county of Zutphen was offered to William, with the title of Duke, which was asserted to have been formerly vested in his family. Those who entertained a bad opinion of him, and attributed whatever looked like greatness in his character to ambition rather than patriotism, insinuated that he was himself the main spring of this manifest intrigue. He had at least prudence enough to deliberate on the offer, and to submit it to the judgment of the States of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht. They viewed with jealousy the aristocratic dignity, and he wisely refused it. This forbearance was rewarded by the province of Utrecht, which adopted the precedent of Holland, in voting the Stadtholdership hereditary in the heirs-male of his body.

The campaign of 1675 passed without any memorable event in the Low Countries. In the following year hopes of peace were held out from the meeting of a congress at Nimeguen; but the articles of peace were to be determined rather by the events of the campaign than by the deliberations of the negotiators. The French took Condé, and several other places; the Prince of Orange, bent on retaliation, sat down before Maestricht, the siege of which he urged impetuously; but the masterly movements of the enemy, and a scarcity of forage, frustrated his plans. Aire had already been taken; the Duke of Orleans had made himself master of Bouchain; Marshal Schomberg, to whom Louis had entrusted his army on retiring to Versailles, was on the advance; and it was found expedient to raise the siege of Maestricht. It was now predicted that the war in Flanders would be unfortunate in its issue; but the Prince of Orange, influenced by the mixed motives of honour, ambition, and animosity, kept the Dutch Republic steady to the cause of its allies, and refused to negotiate a separate peace with France. In October, 1677, he came to England, and was graciously received by the king his uncle. His marriage with Mary, eldest daughter of the Duke of York, was the object of his visit. That event gave general satisfaction at the time; the consequences which arose from it were unsuspected by the most far-sighted. At first the king was disinclined to the match; then neutral; and at last favourable, in the hope of engaging William to fall in with his designs, and listen to the separate proposals of the French monarch. The Prince, on his part, was pleased with the prospect, because he expected that the king of England would, at length, find himself obliged to declare against Louis, and because he imagined that the English nation would be more strongly engaged in his interest, and would adopt his views with respect to the war. In this he was disappointed, though the Parliament was determined on forcing the king to renounce his alliance with Louis. But the States had gained no advantage commensurate with the expense and danger of the contest in which they were engaged, and were inclined to conclude a separate treaty. Mutual discontent among the allies led to the dissolution of the confederacy, and a peace advantageous to France was concluded at Nimeguen in 1678; but causes of animosity still subsisted. The Prince of Orange, independent of political enmity, had now personal grounds of complaint against Louis; who deeply resented the zeal with which William had espoused the liberties of Europe and resisted his aggressions. He could neither bend so haughty a spirit to concessions, nor warp his integrity even by the suggestions of his dominant passion, ambition. But it was in the power of the French monarch to punish this obstinacy, and by oppressing the inhabitants of the Principality of Orange, to take a mean revenge on an innocent people for the imputed offences of their sovereign. In addition to other injuries, when the Duchy of Luxembourg was invaded by the French troops, the commanding officer had orders to expose to sale all the lands, furniture, and effects of the Prince of Orange, although they had been conferred on him by a formal decree of the States of the country. Whether to preserve the appearance of justice, or merely as an insult, Louis summoned the Prince to appear before his Privy Council in 1682, by the title of Messire Guillaume Comte de Nassau, living at the Hague in Holland. In the emergency occasioned by the probability of the Dutch frontier being attacked in 1683, the Prince of Orange exerted all his influence to procure an augmentation of the troops of the Republic; but he had the mortification to experience an obstinate resistance in several of the States, especially in that of Holland, headed by the city of Amsterdam. His coolness and steadiness, qualities invaluable in a statesman, at length prevailed, and he was enabled to carry his measures with a high hand.

The accession of James II. to the throne of Great Britain, in 1685, was hailed as an opportunity for drawing closer both the personal friendship and the political alliance between the Stadtholder of the one country and the King of the other; but a totally different result took place. The headstrong violence of James brought about a coalition of parties to resist him; and many of the English nobility and gentry concurred in an application to the Prince of Orange for assistance. At this crisis William acted with such circumspection as befitted his calculating character. The nation was looking forward to the Prince and Princess, as its only resource against tyranny, civil and ecclesiastical. Were the presumptive heir to concur in the offensive measures, he must partake with the King of the popular hatred. Even the continental alliances, which William was setting his whole soul to establish and improve, would become objects of suspicion to the English, and Parliament might refuse to furnish the necessary funds. Thus by one course he might risk the loss of a succession which was awaiting him; by an opposite conduct, he might profit by the King’s indiscretion, and even forestall the time when the throne was to be his in the course of nature. The birth of a son and heir, in June, 1688, seemed to turn the scale in favour of James; but the affections of his people were not to be recovered: it was even asserted that the child was supposititious. This event, therefore, confirmed William’s previous choice of the side which he was to take; and his measures were well and promptly concerted. A declaration was dispersed throughout Great Britain, setting forth the grievances of the kingdom, and announcing the immediate introduction of an armed force from abroad, for the purpose of procuring the convocation of a free parliament. In a short time, full four hundred transports were hired; the army rapidly fell down the rivers and canals from Nimeguen; the artillery, arms, stores, and horses were embarked; and, on the 21st of October, 1668, the Prince set sail from Helvoetsluys, with a fleet of near five hundred vessels, and an army of more than fourteen thousand men. He was compelled to put back by a storm; but, on a second attempt, he had a prosperous voyage, while the King’s fleet was windbound. He arrived at Torbay on the 4th of November, and disembarked on the 5th, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Treason. The remembrance of Monmouth’s ill-fated rebellion prevented the western people from joining him; but at length several persons of consideration took up the cause, and an association was formed for its support. At this last hour James expressed his readiness to make concessions; but it was too late; they were looked on only as tokens of fear: the confidence of the people in the King’s sincerity was gone for ever. But, how much soever his conduct deserved censure, his distresses entitled him to pity. One daughter was the wife of his opponent; the other threw herself into the hands of the insurgents. In the agony of his heart the father exclaimed, “God help me! my own children have forsaken me.” He sent the Queen and infant Prince to France. Public affairs were in the utmost confusion, and seemed likely to remain so while he stayed in the island. After many of those perplexing adventures and narrow escapes which generally befall dethroned royalty, he at length succeeded in embarking for the continent.

The Prince issued circular letters for the election of members to a Convention, which met January 22, 1689. It appeared at once, that the House of Commons, agreeably to the prevailing sentiments both of the nation and of those in present authority, was chiefly chosen from among the Whig party. The throne was declared vacant by the following vote:—“That King James the Second, having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract between king and people; and having, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, violated the fundamental laws, and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby vacant.” By the national consent, the vacancy was supplied by his daughter Mary and her husband William conjointly. Anne was nominated the next in succession, to the exclusion of the infant prince. The Bill of Rights was passed at the same time, settling disputed points between king and people, circumscribing and defining the royal prerogative, and affirming the rights of the nation. That “original contract between king and people,” referred to by the vote of Parliament, seemed hitherto to have existed rather as a theory than as a practical and binding engagement; but at this crisis the contract was put into legal form, and duly executed; the general principles of free government were distinctly promulgated; and a precedent was established which fixed the succession to the British monarchy on Protestantism, and on the choice of the nation through its parliamentary organ.

William was thus chosen for the sovereign of a powerful kingdom; but he had little personal knowledge of his new subjects, and party feuds ran high, so that it was more difficult to steer between the opposing factions of the British court than it had been between those of the United Provinces. His reign accordingly was pregnant with events, both domestic and foreign, of the highest historical interest; though we shall mention none but those in which he was immediately and personally concerned.

The Prince of Orange lost no time in apprising the States-General of his accession to the British throne. He assured them of his persevering endeavours to promote the well-being of his native country, which he was so far from abandoning, that he intended to retain his high offices in it. War with France was renewed early in 1689 by the States, supported by the house of Austria and some of the German princes; nor was it difficult for William to procure the concurrence of the English Parliament, when the object was the humiliation of France and her arbitrary sovereign. But the Commission for reforming church discipline threw him into difficulties with his new subjects. The high church party branded the King as an enemy to the hierarchy, because he was inclined to relieve the Dissenters from the oppressions of which they complained. The two Universities declared against all alterations. Dr. Jane, the most violent partisan in the convocation, was chosen prolocutor, and in a speech to the Bishop of London, as president, asserted that the English Liturgy needed no reform, and concluded with the declaration of the barons, “Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari.” The Bishop’s exhortation to charity and indulgence towards the Dissenters was so ill received, that it was necessary to prorogue the convocation, on the plea that the royal commission was invalid from not having been sealed. In the spring of 1689, James landed in Ireland with a French force, and was received by the Catholics with marks of strong attachment. Marshal Schomberg was sent to oppose him, but was able to effect little during the campaign of that year. William, in the mean time, had been successful in suppressing a Jacobite insurrection in Scotland, and embarked for Ireland with a reinforcement in the summer of 1690. He immediately marched against James, who was strongly posted on the river Boyne. Schomberg passed the river in person, and put himself at the head of a corps of French Protestants. Pointing to the enemy, he said, “Gentlemen, behold your persecutors!” With these words he advanced to the attack, but was killed by a random shot from the French regiments. The death of this general was near proving fatal to the English army; but William retrieved the fortune of the day, and totally dispersed the opposite force. In this engagement the Irish lost 1500 men, and the English about one-third of that number.

Disturbances again took place among the Jacobites in the Scotch Highlands. A simultaneous insurrection was planned in both kingdoms, while a descent from the French coast was to have divided the attention of the friends of government; but the defeat of the French fleet near Cape La Hogue, in 1692, frustrated this combined attempt, and relieved the nation from the dread of civil war. In 1691 the King had placed himself at the head of the Grand Alliance against France, of which he had been the prime mover; he was therefore absent on the continent during the dangers to which his new kingdom was exposed. His repeated losses in the first two campaigns rather impaired than enhanced his military renown. He resolved to seize the first opportunity of retrieving his honour by a spirited attempt to surprise Marshal Luxembourg, at Steenkirk, but was again defeated, after having fought with courage and perseverance against unequal numbers. In 1693 he was defeated at Landen by Luxembourg, notwithstanding his brave efforts to retrieve the fortune of the day. The victory was held by the allies to have been gained solely by superior numbers; and though the allies suffered severely, the enemy lost a greater number both of officers and men, and gained no solid advantage by the battle. William charged wherever the danger was greatest: his dress was penetrated by three musket balls. But in this, as in other battles, his arrangements were severely censured. When Luxembourg saw the nature of his position, immediately before the engagement, he is said to have exclaimed, “Now I believe Waldeck is really dead:” in allusion to that general’s acknowledged skill in choosing ground for an encampment. The campaign of 1694 was opened by William with superior forces; but the genius and skilful tactics of Luxembourg prevented the allies from availing themselves, in any considerable degree, of their advantages. The death of Queen Mary, which took place early in 1695, proved a severe calamity, both to the king and the nation. She had been a vigilant guardian of her husband’s interests, which were constantly exposed to hazard by the conflicts of party, and by the disadvantages under which he laboured as a foreigner. In 1696 a congress was opened at Ryswick, to negotiate a general peace; and William was so far cured of ambition as not to interpose any obstacles. In the following year the treaty was concluded.

The leading object of the English Parliament, when the war no longer pressed on its resources, was the reduction of the military establishment. In this all parties concurred: the friends of liberty, from jealousy of a standing army, as dangerous to the constitution; the friends of the excluded family, from personal dislike of its supplanter, and a desire to thwart him in his favourite pursuit. The King of Spain’s death was the last event of great importance in William’s reign. The powers of Europe had arranged plans to prevent the accumulation of the Spanish possessions in the houses of Bourbon and Austria; but the French King violated all his solemn pledges, by accepting the deceased monarch’s will in favour of his own grandson, the Duke of Anjou. In consequence of this breach of faith, preparations were made by England and Holland for a renewal of war with France; but a fall from his horse prevented William from further pursuing his military career, and the glory of reducing Louis XIV. within the bounds of his own kingdom was left to be earned by the generals of his successor. The King was nearly recovered from the lameness consequent on his fall, when fever supervened. While he lay sick, the Earl of Albemarle arrived from Holland, to confer with him privately on the state of continental affairs; but his information was coldly received, and the King said that he was approaching his end. In the evening he thanked his principal physician for his attention, and said, “I know that you and the other learned physicians have done all that your art can do for my relief; but all means are ineffectual, and I submit.” He died on the 8th of March, 1701–2, in the fifty-second year of his age and thirteenth of his reign.

The character of King William has been drawn with all the exaggeration of panegyric and obloquy by the opposing partisans in a cause, which is still the subject of controversy on general principles, although the personal interest of contending individuals and families has long been extinguished. William therefore can scarcely, even now, be viewed with the cool impartiality of mere history. His personal character was neither amiable nor interesting: but his native country owes him a lasting debt of gratitude, as the second founder of its liberty and independence; and his adopted country is bound to uphold his memory, as its champion and deliverer from civil and religious thraldom. In short, the attachment of the English nation to constitutional rights and liberal government may be measured by its adherence to the principles established at the Revolution of 1688, and its just estimate of that Sovereign and those statesmen who placed the liberties of Great Britain on a solid and lasting foundation.

[Histoire des Provinces Unies, Voltaire, Burnet, Hume, Smollett.]

[From West’s Picture of the Battle of the Boyne.]

GOETHE.

If the opinion of his contemporaries become the judgment of posterity, the name of Goethe is destined to occupy, in future ages, that pre-eminent station in the literary history of Germany which is now undisputedly held in their respective nations, by Shakspeare, Dante, and Cervantes. Until this judgment be pronounced by the final tribunal, we may characterize him as the happiest of great poets. He attained a length of years granted to few; and his long life was spent in successful literary labour, not imposed by necessity, but prompted by the suggestions of his own genius and love of art. Nature had endowed him with the much-prized gifts of bodily strength and personal beauty. He indulged freely in the pleasures of society; associated with his superiors in station as their equal; lived in ease and affluence; and, finally, in exception to the general rule, enjoyed, during his life,

“The estate that wits inherit after death.”

The founders of the new theory of poetics in Germany, the Schlegels, have characterized his genius as universal. Its productions, including posthumous writings, will occupy fifty-five volumes of works of imagination and science, and cannot be even named by us individually. A few of these works, which have occasioned volumes of criticism, we shall be constrained to designate in brief sentences, and we shall as briefly advert to the main incidents of the author’s life.

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.
GOETHE.
From a Picture by George Dawe, Esq^r. R.A.
in the possession of Henry Dawe, Esq^r.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born of affluent parents, August 28, 1749, at Frankfort on the Main. He attended successively the universities of Leipzig and Strasburg; and, in 1771, took a doctor’s degree in jurisprudence; but from his early youth literature was his ruling passion. In his twenty-fourth year he had already acquired unexampled popularity by his original and daring tragedy of ‘Götz von Berlichingen,’ published in 1773. In 1774 he gained a European celebrity by the ‘Sorrows of Werter;’ and he had already rendered himself an object of admiration to the young, and of terror to the timid, by the publication of several pungent satirical writings, when his good genius guided to the vicinity of Frankfort the young Duke of Saxe Weimar, who was about to assume the government on coming of age. In accepting the friendship, and taking up his residence at the court of this prince, Goethe entered on an unvarying career of prosperity. For a few years the young Duke and his friend led a life of gaiety, of which there are many curious anecdotes current in Germany; but, during a joyous and somewhat wild life, the intellectual singularly prevailed over the sensual. Even during that course of dissipation, the most important of Goethe’s works were commenced, though none of them were published until after his return from Italy. That country he visited in 1786, and to the time which he spent in it he ever after recurred with delight. Though Shakspeare was the individual poet he most prized, and Greek the literature which he held up as the rule of all excellence, Italy was the land of his affections. He remained two winters in Rome. Here he cultivated the studies of archaeology and the fine arts, which he had begun to practise in his youth, but now abandoned for poetry and the study of nature.

To these pursuits, on his return to Germany, he applied as the chief business of his life; and the insignificance of the patron as a sovereign tended to render the poet more conspicuous, and to increase his power over the minds of the Germans. The Duke was a general in the Prussian service, and, as a minor power, followed the course of policy pursued by the head of his house, the Elector of Saxony. He could not indulge in ambition, and spent his small revenue more like a private nobleman than a sovereign prince. He was desirous to collect a library for the use of himself and the inhabitants of Weimar. He had mines on one portion of his small territory. With the other Dukes of Saxony he was jointly the possessor of a university, Jena. He wished to found a school of drawing; and the creation of a German theatre, and the collecting eminent men of all kinds at Weimar and Jena, were the especial objects of his ambition. In all these things Goethe was the right-hand to execute, if his, in fact, was not the mind to design. In the matters which most governments make their prime concern, such as finances, military affairs, and courts of justice, Goethe had certainly no inclination to take any part; he was what, in France, would be called a minister of public instruction. Scarcely was he settled in his new office when the French Revolution broke out. This led to one famous exception to the life he was pursuing. He has recorded it in the volume of his ‘Memoirs,’ relating his participation in the too famous campaign of 1792, when he, as a non-combatant, accompanied the Duke of Saxe Weimar, who served under the Duke of Brunswick in his famous march which did not reach to Paris. The early retirement of Prussia from the league against France restored peace to the North of Germany, and Goethe was at liberty to return to his favourite pursuits. In the prosecution of these he had the happiness soon to connect himself with Schiller, a man ten years younger than himself, of a genius totally opposite to his own, and therefore perhaps best adapted to act in concert with him.

Goethe has, with delightful frankness, related how, exceedingly disliking the ‘Robbers,’ Schiller’s first, worst, and most famous play, and feeling a strong aversion towards the Kantian philosophy, to which Schiller was attached, he had conceived an antipathy towards the offending poet, whom he resolutely shunned. But having once met, the passionate zeal of Schiller in pursuit of their common objects was irresistible. Dislike subsided into tolerance, and was at last converted into warm admiration and love. Memorable consequences followed from their union, and their literary correspondence remains an instructive example of what may be effected by the collision of powerful minds of opposite character. Schiller died in 1804. During the time allotted to their joint exertions, Goethe produced many of his greatest works, and Schiller all the best of his. During the same period, Goethe pursued his philosophical studies with the eminent men who then filled professors’ chairs at Jena. The metaphysical systems of Fichte, and afterwards of Schelling, which succeeded that of Kant, met with some favour in his eyes. At least, though he kept aloof from the controversies of the day, he laboured to connect with philosophical speculations his own particular studies in various branches of natural history and science.

It was after Schiller’s death, and when Goethe was approaching his sixtieth year, that the storm of war unexpectedly burst upon Weimar and Jena. He did not leave Weimar; but aware of the peril to which he with every one was exposed, on the very day of the battle of Jena, the 14th of October, 1806, he married a lady with whom he had lived for many years, and at the same time legitimated his only child, a son. During the short period of extreme degradation into which Prussia and Saxony sunk, from 1806 till the fall of Bonaparte in 1813, he withdrew, as much as possible, from political life; he would not suffer newspapers to be brought him, or politics to be discussed in his presence, but fled to the arts and sciences as an asylum against the miserable realities of life. Such had always been his practice. He has said of himself that he never had a disease of the mind which he did not cure by turning it into a poem. In his early youth, having lost a mistress through foolish petulance of temper, he, as a penance, made his own folly the subject of a comedy. And, in after life, while Europe was convulsed, he was absorbed in studies independent of the incidents of the day. Thus varying his pursuits, he kept on his serene course with no other interruptions than such as inevitably befall those who attain old age. It was his lot to survive the associates of his youth. In 1827, he lost his early friend, from whom he had never been estranged, the Grand Duke of Weimar. In 1830, he met with a severer privation, in the death of his son at Rome. It was feared that this calamity would prove fatal to Goethe, whose strength was sensibly declining; but he survived the blow, and enjoyed the best consolation which could be afforded to him in the exemplary care of his amiable and gifted daughter-in-law, and in his two young grand-children, to whom he was tenderly attached. His last years were spent in cheerful retirement. He possessed an elegant and spacious house in Weimar, but he also had a cottage in the park, where he dwelt alone, receiving his friends tête-à-tête; and, on particular occasions, going into the town to entertain company. He retained his faculties to the last, and made a very precise disposition of his property. His extensive collections in natural history and art were directed to be preserved as a museum for twenty years. These were among the objects of his latest solicitude. He died March 24, 1832, in the eighty-third year of his age.

Goethe’s figure was commanding, and his countenance severely handsome. He appears to have acquired a great ascendency over his fellow-students at the universities, and to have kept the professors in awe. In after life he was reproached by Bürger and others with haughtiness, and was accused of making his inferiors in station and in genius too sensible of their inferiority; but his powers of captivation were irresistible when he pleased to exert them. His social talents were of the highest order. Such was Goethe for his own generation and country. To posterity he will live chiefly as a poet. Of his most remarkable works we will now speak, not chronologically, but according to the classes which are recognised by systematic writers.

In epic poetry, his pretensions will be derided by those who adhere to the theory of M. Bossu, adopted by Pope. According to this, the common opinion, the ‘Epos’ requires supernatural machinery, illustrious actors, and heroic incident. The German critics, on the contrary, maintain that the essential character of the Homeric poetry lies in the epic style, not in the subject of the narrative; a style analogous to that of Herodotus, whom they place at the head of the epic historians, and to be found in a very large proportion of our own ancient ballads, such as relate to Robin Hood, Chevy Chase, &c. Goethe on this idea began a continuation of the Iliad in his ‘Achilleis,’ and he threw the graces of his own style over the old epic fable of ‘Reynard the Fox.’ But it was in ‘Herman and Dorothea’ that he displayed all his powers: this is both a patriotic and domestic tale; the characters in humble life; the incident, a flight over the Rhine on the invasion of the French. It abounds in maxims of moral wisdom, and in pathos; but it is too national to bear translating.

It is as a lyric poet that Goethe is popular in the fullest sense of the word, and may challenge comparison with the greatest masters of all ages. In the song, he abounds in master-pieces, passionate and gay. His elegy has sometimes the erotic character of Propertius, (as in the famous ‘Roman Elegies,’) and sometimes emulates the refinement and purity of Petrarch: his ballads are as wild and tender as any that Spain or Scotland have produced. His very numerous epigrams bear more resemblance to the Greek Anthology than to the pointed style of the Latin writers. Besides these he has produced a number of allegorical and enigmatical poems on art and philosophy, which cannot be placed under any known class.

Goethe’s dramatic works are about twenty in number. There is this peculiarity in his career as a dramatic poet, that though the drama is essentially the most popular branch of poetry, he never wrote for the people; his plays are all experiments, and no two resemble each other. He seems to have been unaffectedly indifferent to their reception on the stage. His first juvenile play, ‘Götz von Berlichingen,’ was in prose, and unlike any thing that had appeared on the German boards. It exhibited, in a strong light, the manners of the Germans at a romantic period when the petty barons and knights were a sort of privileged freebooters, sometimes generously resisting the oppressions of the emperor and the higher nobility, and sometimes plundering the citizens of the free towns. The style was in harmony with the subject, daring in its originality, and all but licentious in its freedom. By audiences accustomed only to pedantic imitations of the French, it was received with tumultuous applause; but the admiration of the more cultivated classes was given to the ‘Iphigenia in Tauris,’ an echo, as Schlegel expresses it, of the Greek, yet neither a translation nor a copy. Christian purity of morals harmoniously blending with pagan incident, not a line disturbs the exquisite symmetry of this the most generally admired of Goethe’s dramas.

Not less perfect in style is the anomalous ‘Torquato Tasso,’ which deserves especial notice, though not as a play adapted to the stage: it is rather a didactic poem in dialogue than a drama. Tasso and the warrior statesman Antonio exhibit in contrast the poetical character and that of the man of the world. It could secure the attention of an audience only when performed on the Duke’s private theatre, where the members of the Ducal family usually represented the princes of the House of Este, and Goethe himself acted the part of Tasso; and when it was performed as a sort of funeral obsequies on the death of the poet himself.

‘Egmont’ is an historical play in prose, founded on the real tragedy perpetrated by the bloody Alba, in Belgium. Its most remarkable feature is the unheroic character of Egmont himself. While William of Orange is the common stage hero, patriotic and wise, destined to save his country, Count Egmont is the warm-hearted, sensual, and munificent nobleman, a patriot not from reflection but impulse, whose love for the humble Clara is much more prominent than his patriotism, and who is therefore doomed to perish. The pathos lies in the dissonance between the man and the necessities of his position. Goethe, in drawing such a character, probably thought of Hamlet, of whom he makes an analogous remark.

We pass over a number of dramas, all original, all experiments in furtherance of his own studies, and name only ‘Faustus,’ the unique, the undefinable. Begun in youth, continued at intervals during a long life, and finally left unfinished, it has been called a grotesque tragedy. Who knows not the popular legend of the learned magician who sold his soul to the devil? This coarse tale of vulgar superstition is here used as a vehicle into which the adventurous poet has cast all that

“Perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.”

The erring philosopher is attended on the wrong road by a laughing devil, Mephistophiles, who leads him through scenes of the wildest frolic and the most appalling wretchedness. All that is most deplorable, most frightful in human life, is here displayed with the running comment of the dæmon whom Omnipotence does not confound; and the most awful problems of divinity and moral philosophy are treated with pathetic sadness by the wretched victim, or with infernal satire by his master-slave. These repulsive elements are nevertheless combined with the soothing, not to say sanctifying, influence of a Margaret, a confiding, loving, innocent woman, whose very destruction works on the heart like an act of grace, and prepares the spectator for the promised salvation of her lover.

In the romance, as in the drama, Goethe commenced a career which he immediately abandoned. His Werter breathes a spirit of dissatisfaction with the world and its institutions. But by writing that book, which infected the rising generation with the same spirit, he cured himself of the disease; and he then became the declared foe of the sentimental, which he attacked in his romantic comedy, ‘The Triumph of Sentimentality.’

In later years, when he was become the meditating philosopher, and, at the same time, indulged in more cheerful contemplations of life, he produced ‘Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship,’ intended to elucidate problems of psychology. The stage being the symbol of life, his hero is thrown among players, and both the real drama, and the drama of life are analyzed, with perpetual illustrations of the one by the other. After an interval of some years, Goethe, in a second part, exhibited his pupil advanced as on a sort of journey. Conscious that his problem, like that of Faustus, was insoluble, he has not dared to exhibit either Faustus in heaven or Wilhelm as a master. Like the Faustus, Wilhelm Meister is still ‘caviare to the million.’

In a third romance, ‘Elective Affinities,’ Goethe treats subtilely of that passion to which Lord Bacon says “the stage is more beholden than the life of man.” As the chemical title suggests, he shows how the felicity of a married couple is marred by the intrusion of other minds, with which each consort has more affinity than with the companion previously chosen.

When ‘Wilhelm Meister’ first appeared, the narrative of Wilhelm’s childhood was related with such spirit and air of truth, that it was believed to be the author’s own personal history; and, in truth, the resemblance between the feigned and real history was soon made manifest by the appearance of Goethe’s own memoirs, under the puzzling title ‘From my Life: Fiction and Truth;’ so entitled, to allow for the unconscious illusions to which we are exposed, when, in advanced life, we try to recollect the occurrences of childhood, and unintentionally confound memory with imagination. These memoirs, including his foreign travels, amount already to nine volumes, and others are to follow; but these earlier volumes treat solely of the author’s intellectual life. Concerning much that men are inquisitive about, he says nothing. Not a hint is dropped concerning the fortune of his father, or the amount of profit which he himself derived from his writings. His being ennobled was an incident which he thought too unimportant for notice; and of honours and distinctions conferred on him he seldom condescends to speak.

Among the studies which partook of Goethe’s attention were antiquities and the fine arts. This led to the composition of a masterpiece, his critical characteristic of Winkelman, and an account of Hackert, the landscape painter. The same course of study led him to translate that delightful work, the auto-biography of Benvenuto Cellini, which was first made known to the European public by the Earl of Bristol, late Bishop of Derry, and which is now in the hands of all lovers of the fine arts. On art, in its various branches, Goethe’s prose writings are very numerous. As a critic also he has written much, and his criticism is remarkably indulgent and generous.

Such being the variety of works in which he has recorded his speculations on man, his powers, his actions, and his productions, it will be naturally asked, what were the main features of his philosophy, and to what results did they lead on those great points which unhappily disunite mankind, religion and politics?

Hume has well designated the great varieties of intellect and moral character by the significant scholastic names of the Platonist, the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Sceptic. According to this classification, it may be said that Goethe was too devotedly attached to the study of nature and actual life to be a Platonist; he loved contemplation too intensely, and was too indolent and self-indulgent to be a stoic; he was too intellectual to be a gross sensualist, or, in the worst sense, an Epicurean; and he had too much imagination to be able to tolerate the modern rational philosophy, a mere system of negatives. In so far, therefore, he was an enemy of vulgar scepticism; yet, blended with the refinement which the poetic mind presupposes, he had a large portion of scepticism and Epicureanism in his nature. Towards the positive religion which he found established in his own country he manifested respect, though he never made any distinct profession of faith upon doctrinal matters; he conformed however to the Lutheran church. On two occasions only do we recollect the expression of any strong feeling as to religion. He early betrayed great contempt towards the German Rationalists, whom he rather despised for their shallowness than reproached with being mischievous. His love of Rome by no means reconciled him to the Church of Rome, against which he would inveigh with a warmth unusual in him. He maintained that Catholic superstition had deeply injured the poetic character of Calderon, and considered the Protestantism of Shakspeare as a happy accident in the life of that incomparable man. It appears from his memoirs, that Judaism and Christianity had occupied his mind very seriously from his childhood. He delighted in portraying the Christian enthusiast in a tone of kindred enthusiasm, as in his ‘Confessions of a Beautiful Soul,’ of which the original was a Moravian lady, his friend; and it was only in incidental bursts of sarcasm, especially in his gayer poems, that he alarmed the timid and the scrupulous. In spite of occasional ebullitions of spleen or rash speculation, he was habitually hostile towards the French anti-religious party. He makes his devil in Faustus describe himself as the “spirit that always denies,” in the same way that Alfieri scornfully terms Voltaire “Disinventor ed Inventor di nulla.” It was this negative, this merely destructive character, to which Goethe was in all things most resolutely opposed.

This sentiment extended to politics. Long before the words “Conservative” and “Destructive” were applied to English parties, Goethe had made frequent use of them. It was the tendency of his mind to look with indulgence, if not with favour, on whatever he found in the exercise of productive power. Laudo manentem might have been his motto. He saw in the French revolutionists, as in their philosophers, the spirit of destruction, and he clung with affection to institutions under which so many fine arts and rapidly advancing sciences had flourished. With reference to public life, Goethe has been severely reproached on two grounds. He has been accused of wanting patriotism; but before a passion can be generated, an object must be presented. What country had Goethe to love in his youth? A walled city, which he could run round before breakfast. The first great political event which he witnessed, was the Seven years’ war. His native city was in the possession of the French, whom one party considered as allies and the other as enemies. Goethe’s father adhered to Frederick, his grandfather was attached to the Imperial House: at the best he could love but half a nation. Hence Wieland said, “I have no fellow-countrymen; I have only sprach-genossen,”—speech-mates. Thus German patriotism could be but a sort of corporation spirit; like the affections of a liveryman, confined to the members of his company. It was not till the close of the last war that the common oppression exercised by Bonaparte generated a common hatred towards France, and with it something like patriotism on a great scale. Yet so anomalous is the condition of Germany, that at this moment this sentiment, or the loud avowal of it, is looked on as akin to disloyalty; and, at the universities, students are forbidden to frequent clubs, or to assume denominations, which have a reference to one general national character. There are few appeals among Goethe’s writings to national feeling; and, in truth, his studies led him to be, in sentiment, the fellow-citizen of the great poets and artists of all nations, the contemporary of the great men of all ages. The other reproach is, that, being admitted to familiarity with princes, he lost his love of the people, as such. Now, it must be owned, that in this respect he felt pretty much as Milton did, in whom attachment to the aristocracy of talent was a marked quality. Of the people, as such, he seems to have thought lowly; his affections were exercised on the select few,—the nobles of nature, not of the herald’s office. That he had no vulgar reverence for persons in authority, or for the privileged orders, is amply proved by all he wrote. It may finally be remarked, as the most characteristic feature of his moral speculations, that he had habitually contemplated mankind, not as a moralist, but as a naturalist. There are some thinkers who never consider men but as objects of praise or blame; others, who only study men with a view of making them different from what they are. Such are reformers, the leaders of institutions, philanthropists, who think only in order to act. To neither of these classes did Goethe belong. He took men as he found them; he was content to take society as he found it, with all its complex institutions. He was disposed to make the best of what he found, but seemed reluctant to waste his powers in the vain attempt to make men materially different from what they were before; hence arose an inert, or indolent acquiescence in what he found existing.

He had early in life laboured to catch a new point of view from which nature might be contemplated on all sides; or a law in conformity with which the manifold operations of nature might be seen as if they were one. He first made this idea known in his ‘Metamorphosis of Plants.’ His botanical studies were continued for many years of his life. He afterwards busied himself with the minute and experimental study of chromatics. He edited a journal of science, and wrote more or less on mineralogy, geology, comparative anatomy, optics, and meteorology. A metaphysical spirit runs through all these writings, so alien from the mode of study pursued in other countries, that we do not recollect any notice of them by any English writer, except Professor Lindley, in his ‘Introduction to Botany,’ who confines his remarks to Goethe’s botanical works. The Professor represents Goethe as having revived a nearly-forgotten doctrine, first promulgated by Linnæus. But, for thirty years after the first appearance of the ‘Metamorphosis,’ it produced little or no effect even in Germany. Now, indeed, “it has come to be considered the basis of all scientific knowledge of vegetable structure.” Whether, in the revolutions of opinion, the bold polemical writings of Goethe against the Newtonian theory of light and colours will ever be looked upon as more than the extravagances of a great genius wandering out of his own sphere, time will show. For the present this is the view taken of the great poet’s scientific writings, both by Italians and Frenchmen. But, whatever dreams he may have mixed up with his investigations, Goethe was no mere dreamer: to the last hour of his life, he made it his business to inform himself concerning the progress of the sciences in foreign countries. All new books were brought to him, even to the end of his life; he composed elaborate poems at the age of seventy; and when beyond sixty years of age, entered with zeal upon the study of Oriental poetry, to apply the spirit of which, to Western notions and feelings, he composed his ‘West-Eastern Divan.’ In this the infinite variety of his studies and pursuits lay that ‘all-sidedness’ (if we may be pardoned for adopting such a word from the German) for which he was so remarkable. From the same quality proceeded that unusual toleration of novelties which he could reconcile to the love of what is established. He would not permit a clever farce to be acted on the stage, when he was manager, written in derision of Gall’s cranioscopy. Instead of joining in the ridicule of animal magnetism, he would fairly investigate its pretensions. When a book on the Clouds was published by Howard, in England, Goethe instantly wrote an account of it, inventing appropriate German words to designate the forms pointed out. In his hunger and thirst after knowledge, he was omnivorous. This was the ruling passion strong in death. Only the evening before his decease he received some new books from Paris, by which he was greatly excited. It is said that a volume, by Salvandy, was grasped in his hand when he died; and his last words were singularly appropriate to his temper, and might be received by his admirers as almost prophetic. He ordered the window-shutters to be opened, exclaiming, “More light! More light!”

Engraved by H. Meyer.
CORREGGIO.
After a head by himself in the Cathedral of Parma.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

CORREGGIO.

The beginning of the sixteenth century, a period remarkable for the general developement of Italian genius, was peculiarly distinguished by the appearance of four great painters, who attained a perfection, since unequalled, in different departments of their art. Form and sublimity of conception were the attributes of M. Angelo; expression and propriety of invention were among the prominent excellencies of Raffaelle; colour was the strength of Titian; and harmony, founded on light and shade, chiefly characterised Correggio. Antonio Allegri was born in 1493, or 1494; the name of his birth-place superseded that of his family, and he has been celebrated under the name of Antonio da Correggio. He was the son of Pellegrino Allegri, a merchant of some property, and his lineage, which was long doubtful, has been traced with sufficient accuracy by his latest biographer, Pungileoni. The family name was sometimes Latinised to Lætus and de Allegris, and again Italianised to Lieto, which accounts for the various inscriptions on Correggio’s pictures. Till the researches of the author above-named, who supplied, as far as possible, what Mengs had left imperfect, the most contradictory accounts were repeated respecting the family, the fortunes, and even the precise time of the birth and death of Correggio. The story of his extreme poverty, in particular, has been often copied without examination from Vasari; but, as Fuseli observes, “considering the public works in which Correggio was employed, the prices he was paid for them, compared with the metropolitan prices of Raffaelle himself, it is probable that his circumstances kept pace with his fame, and that he was nearer to opulence than want.” It is still doubtful under whom he studied; but, as his uncle Lorenzo was a painter, it is probable that Antonio learned the rudiments of art from him; and a single specimen extant of one Antonio Bartolotto, a contemporary master, is so much in the style of Correggio, as to justify the conjecture that the example, at least, of the elder painter was not without its effect. The residence of Andrea Mantegna at no greater distance than Mantua, has perhaps led some writers to rank Correggio among his scholars; but his death, when Correggio was only thirteen years of age, renders the supposition improbable. That Correggio studied the works of Mantegna is most certain: his fondness for foreshortening was probably derived from that master; nor should it be forgotten, that the school of Andrea was celebrated after his death, and was still continued by his sons Francesco and Lodovico. Vedriani mentions another master, Francesco Bianchi, of Modena, but with as little certainty as the rest. The peculiar impasto[^[3]] which distinguishes the pictures of Correggio, a mode of execution which he carried to sudden perfection, and which has never since been surpassed, is less to be recognised, as Lanzi supposes, in the manner of Mantegna than in that of Lionardo da Vinci; and even the chiaro-scuro of Correggio, however enlarged and improved, is manifestly derived from the same source. The art of foreshortening on ceilings, called by the Italians “il di sotto in su,” was also practised in the Mantuan school before Correggio; whether in imitation of the celebrated ceiling of Melozzo da Forlì, the first known effort of the kind, painted in Rome in 1472, it is impossible to say.

[3]. Impasto is literally an impasting or thick application of the colour. The peculiarity of Correggio’s method is, that this impasto is solid without roughness of surface, and blended without heaviness or opacity. Sir Joshua Reynolds says, “His (Correggio’s) colour and mode of finishing approach nearer to perfection than those of any other painter.”

Among the earliest works of Correggio, Lanzi mentions some frescoes at Mantua, supposed to have been done while the artist was in the school of the sons of Mantegna; but a very feeble tradition is the only ground for this supposition. The same author speaks of more than one Madonna in the Ducal Gallery at Modena, as belonging to this early period. A considerable picture, painted by Correggio when eighteen years of age, and the undoubted work of his hand, is preserved at Dresden; it was originally done for the church of S. Niccola, at Carpi. It represents the Virgin seated on a throne, surrounded by various saints; the inscription is, “Antonio de Allegris.” The colouring of this picture, as Mengs observes, is in a style between that of Perugino and Lionardo da Vinci. The head of the Virgin, he adds, greatly resembles the manner of Lionardo; the folds of the drapery appear as if done by Mantegna, that is, in the mode of encircling the limbs, but they are less hard, and are in a larger style. Two pictures painted about the same time are mentioned, and somewhat differently described, by Tiraboschi and Lanzi. One was an altar-piece for a church at Correggio, representing various saints; it was blackened and injured by a varnish, and removed from the altar as useless, a copy being substituted in its place. The original has been since cleaned, and according to Lanzi is recognised as an early work of the master. The other was an altar-piece, in three compartments, the centre subject of which was a repose of the Holy Family. The two wings, representing two saints, are lost; but the Holy Family is probably the picture now in the Florence Gallery, attributed by Barry to Correggio, and only doubtful, in the opinion of some connoisseurs, from its dryness of manner, as compared with the later works of the master. A picture belonging to the Duke of Sutherland, and formerly in the Orleans gallery, representing a muleteer and other figures, is supposed by some to be an early work of Correggio, but it has none of the hardness of the Carpi altar-piece to warrant this conjecture.

In the picture in the Florence Gallery of the Madonna adoring her Infant, and in the Noli me tangere of the Escurial, to which Lanzi adds a Marsyas, in the possession of the Marchese Litta of Milan, the artist already approached that excellent style, which has been designated by the epithet ‘Correggiesque.’ The Marsyas is mentioned in the catalogue of Charles I. The two small pictures of the marriage of St. Catherine, one in the gallery at St. Petersburgh, the other in that of Naples, belong to the same period. In that preserved at St. Petersburgh, the name of Allegri is translated to Lieto; the date is 1517. The larger, and probably later picture of this subject, with the addition of the figure of St. Sebastian, is in the Louvre. The celebrated picture of S. Giorgio, now at Dresden, has been considered to belong to this period. It was painted for the confraternity of S. Pietro Martire, at Modena. This work, containing many figures, and among the rest some children, in the peculiarly graceful manner of Correggio, which were afterwards the admiration of Guido, has all the excellencies of the master, except that magic of chiaro-scuro for which he was subsequently so celebrated. It may be remarked, that the sweetness of expression in Correggio’s children and women was probably derived from Lionardo da Vinci, as certain peculiarities of resemblance are to be traced between them.

In 1519, Correggio married Girolama Merlini, from whom Pungileoni supposes the Madonna, called the Zingarella, to have been painted. She was a lady of birth and condition, and brought him a sufficient dowry; and this is an additional proof of the incorrectness of the assertions of Vasari, respecting the extreme poverty of the painter. It must be remembered too, that from this time, when he was about twenty-five years of age, his employment constantly increased; and from the nature of the works he was engaged in, it is quite evident that he was reckoned the best painter in Lombardy.

About this period Correggio began his career in Parma, and his first paintings there were the admirable frescoes in the monastery of S. Paolo. A particular and most satisfactory account of these has been published by Padre Affò. The reputation which this performance gained him, induced the monks of S. Giovanni to employ him in the decoration of their church. The works executed by Correggio on this occasion are in his grandest manner: the Cupola represents the ascension of Christ; the figures of the Apostles, of gigantic size, occupy the lower part. The subject in the Tribune was the Coronation of the Virgin. It was so esteemed, that when that part of the church was demolished to enlarge the choir, the design was repainted for the new Tribune by Cesare Aretusi, according to some, from a copy by Annibale Caracci. The principal group of the original was fortunately saved, and is still to be seen in the Library at Parma; its grandeur of invention and treatment classes it among the highest productions of the art. Round the central group were some figures and heads of angels. The fragments of these were dispersed when the Tribune was destroyed; and the portions of frescoes by Correggio, which exist in various collections, are probably a part of these ruins.

Those who contend that Correggio had visited Rome, suppose that he may have caught some inspiration from the works of M. Angelo; and Ratti imagines, that the Last Judgment was seen and imitated by him; but this work was not begun till after the death of Correggio. Lanzi smiles at the mistake of the author just mentioned; but if Correggio visited Rome, which, on the whole, does not appear probable, he may have seen the ceiling of the Capella Sistina, painted in 1511; and this is more likely to have inspired him than the Last Judgment, even supposing that he could have seen both. There is, however, a remarkable difference between the treatment of the cupolas of Correggio and that of the ceiling of M. Angelo (even setting aside the well-known distinctions of their taste in design), and the execution in both the examples alluded to, is exactly analogous to the styles of the two painters. M. Angelo, though a master of foreshortening, has not supposed his figures to be above the eye, but opposite to it, so that they are still intelligible when seen in any other situation, as for instance, when copied in an engraving. Correggio, on the other hand, always aimed at giving the perspective appearance of figures above the eye; and the violent foreshortening, which was the consequence, renders his figures unintelligible, because improbable, except in their original situation, where their effect, aided by his light and shade, must undoubtedly have been astonishing. Nevertheless, if the end and perfection of the art is to meet the impressions of nature by corresponding representation, and to embody the remembered appearances of things, it is quite evident that foreshortening on ceilings, as it necessarily presents the human figure, and indeed all objects, in a mode absolutely foreign to our experience, must in the same degree depart from the legitimate end of imitation, and can only excite wonder at the artist’s skill. The difference of treatment alluded to belongs in other respects to two distinct views of the art. M. Angelo aimed at the real and permanent qualities of whatever he represented; a taste derived from his knowledge of sculpture, and certainly, as producing a most intelligible style of art, more nearly allied to the principles of the Greeks. Correggio, on the contrary, loved all the attributes of appearance and illusion; his skill in the management of aërial perspective, and the magic of his chiaro-scuro, by which he secured space, relief, and gradation, are qualities less allied to the reality and perspicuity which characterise the grandest style of the formative arts in general, (as opposed to the vagueness of poetical description,) than to the specific excellencies which distinguish painting from sculpture. Even his colour, true as it is, is still subordinate to his light and shade. It is with reference to the uniting and blending principle of light and shade, which presents differences of degree, but not of kind, that the term harmony has been so often employed as describing the characteristic style of Correggio, and the expression is quite distinct from that harmony (the commoner acceptation) which is often applied to the balance and opposition of colours. In the same church of S. Giovanni were the pictures of the Deposition from the Cross, and the Martyrdom of S. Placido and Sta. Flavia, which were taken to Paris; and on the outside of a chapel are the remains of a grand figure of St. John, in fresco. The well-known Madonna della Scodella, and a fresco of a Virgin and Child, in the Capella della Scala, were perhaps painted about this time. The frescoes of S. Giovanni occupied Correggio from 1520 to 1523. The celebrated picture of the Nativity, generally called the Notte, now at Dresden, appears to have been begun in the interval, as the agreement respecting it bears the date of 1522; but it was not placed in the church of S. Prospero at Reggio, for which it was destined, till 1530. The Notte is the picture most frequently referred to as a specimen of that harmony, founded on the skilful management of light and shade, in which Correggio is unrivalled. The source of the picturesque in this work, the emanation of the light from the infant Christ, is at the same time sublime as an invention. “The idea,” as Opie observes, “has been seized with such avidity, and produced so many imitations, that no one is accused of plagiarism. The real author is forgotten, and the public, accustomed to consider this incident as naturally a part of the subject, have long ceased to inquire when, or by whom, it was invented.” Even the angels in the upper part of the picture still receive light from the infant, and the attention is thus constantly directed to the principal subject. The same end is very happily answered by a shepherdess, shading her eyes with her hand, as if dazzled by the light: this figure is particularly mentioned by Vasari. It is remarkable that the same feeling for gradation in the mutable effects of light and shade, displays itself in this composition in the rapid perspective diminution of the figures. The shepherd in the foreground is quite gigantic, compared with the more distant figures; and the effect of proximity and distance, and the space of the picture, is greatly aided by this contrivance. The same principle is observable in Correggio’s cupolas.

The commission for the St. Jerome, placed in the church of S. Antonio Abbate, at Parma, in 1528, one of the artist’s finest works, was given in 1523. There is a copy of this picture by Lodovico Caracci in the Bridgewater Gallery. The attitude and expression of the Magdalen are justly celebrated: she is represented paying her homage to the infant Christ, by pressing his foot against her cheek. The St. Sebastian, now at Dresden, one of the most striking specimens of Correggio’s magic chiaro-scuro, is supposed by Pungileoni to belong to this period. This picture, like the Notte, is remarkable for an exquisite truth of tint in the passages from light to dark. The infinite gradations of chiaro-scuro are rendered still more mysterious from this truth of colour in the half-tints and shadows, and, as in nature, the spectator is soon unconscious of the presence of shade. These imperceptible transitions are confined to the treatment of light and shade, and contrast finely with the pronounced differences of local colour. In this respect the style of Correggio is very different from the system of blending, or, as it is called, breaking the colours: the contrast of hues is undoubtedly mitigated by the negative nature of his shade; but though fully alive to the value of general tone, of which the St. Sebastian is a powerful instance, he seems never to have lost sight of the principle, that the office of colour is to distinguish, and that of light and shade to unite—the first being proper to each object, the second common to all objects.

The peculiar softness for which Correggio is distinguished, is also to be traced to his feeling for the richness and union produced by shade; but he is by no means uniformly soft, like some of his imitators; as, for example, Vanderwerf, whose model seems to have been the Magdalen at Dresden. The principal figures in Correggio’s pictures, or their principal portions, are sometimes relieved in the most distinct manner; as, for instance, the head of the Madonna in this very picture of St. Sebastian, remarkable above all his works for its general softness of outline. As in his light and shade the two extremes of bright and dark are united by every minutest degree between them, so in his forms, every gradation from absolute hardness to undefined and almost imperceptible outline, is also to be observed. Variety in the intensities of shade evidently involves variety in the precision of outlines; but the distinctness of forms in Correggio’s finest works is also regulated by their prominence, importance, or beauty. Lastly, characteristic imitation is greatly aided by his discrimination in this particular. Vasari justly commends Correggio’s peculiarly soft manner in painting hair; but this extreme softness, so true a quality of the object, is generally contrasted in his works with the character of some totally different substance. Thus, in the Reclining Magdalen Reading, the print of which is well known, the crystal vase, her usual attribute, placed near her head, is painted with the utmost sharpness, and thus heightens the beauty and truth of the hair, which is remarkable for its undulating softness.

The fame which the frescoes of S. Giovanni procured for their author, even in their commencement, led to his decorating the cathedral of Parma; and the engagement respecting the works therein executed is dated 1522. The subject of the octagonal cupola of the cathedral is the Assumption of the Virgin: a multitude of figures covered the vast surface, and, when the work was in its best state, are described as appearing to float in space. The foreshortenings in this cupola are such as to make the figures appear altogether distorted, except when seen from below, and Mengs himself was astonished at their apparent deformity when he inspected them near. The figures of the Apostles and angels, in various attitudes, occupy the lower portion of the cupola; and in four lunettes underneath are represented the patron saints of the city, the whole being supposed to be lighted by the glory from above. It is evident that Correggio’s feeling for gradation dictated the invention and treatment of his subject in many instances: the whole scale of light and shade cannot be more happily or naturally available, than when the light is supposed to emanate from a point, and gradually lose itself in the opposite extremes; and it happens, that in every instance in which this painter employed the principle, as in the cupolas, the Notte, the St. Sebastian, the Christ in the Garden, &c., the subject itself gained in sublimity. The difference between the cupola of the cathedral and that of S. Giovanni, affords an additional proof of the tendency of Correggio’s general taste as it became further developed. A grandeur more allied to simplicity is the comparative characteristic of the latter, while in the cathedral the multitude of figures, the variety of arrangement and attitude, and the richness and splendor of the light and shade, are calculated to affect the imagination as with a dazzling vision. It has been justly observed by Fuseli, that Correggio’s treatment of this cupola is “less epic or dramatic than ornamental.” It must, however, be remembered, that the surface he had to cover, the interior of a high cupola, could hardly have been occupied by subjects in which form on expression, as predominant qualities, could have produced their effect when seen from below. The only mode which remained was assuredly altogether adapted to the genius of Correggio: space, gradation, chiaro-scuro, were not only the means most likely to be effective in such a situation, but they were precisely the excellencies in which he was pre-eminent. Nevertheless, the example was a seducing one, and was likely to be followed where local circumstances would not so entirely warrant it; and, as the author above quoted observes, “if the cupola of Correggio be, in its kind, unequalled by earlier or succeeding plans, if it leave far behind the effusions of Lanfranco and Pietro da Cortona, it was not the less their model; the ornamental style of machinists dates not the less its origin from him.” In order to give that true foreshortening which was calculated to produce illusion from below, Correggio was assisted by the sculptor Begarelli, who supplied him with small models in clay from which he drew. According to Ratti, one of these was found on the cornice of the cupola by a Florentine painter towards the close of the last century. Some of the drawings by Correggio in the Lawrence collection are supposed to have been studies made from these models. It has been asserted that Correggio himself worked in marble; some figures in a group, by Begarelli, in the church of Sta. Margherita, are ascribed to him, but on very slight grounds. After all, it appears that he never entirely finished the work he had undertaken to do in the cathedral. The Tribune was not begun, and even a few figures in the lower part of the cupola are said to have been added by Bedoli. The cause of this suspension of Correggio’s labours has been attributed, with some probability, to the absurd criticisms of his employers. It is said that they referred to Titian (who is supposed to have visited Parma with the Emperor Charles V.) to decide whether they should cancel the whole, and that the great Venetian rebuked their ignorance, by pronouncing it to be the finest composition he had ever seen.

Correggio ceased to work in the cathedral in 1530, about four years before his death. A great number of his oil pictures are assigned to this period, more indeed than he could have executed, and some of them must therefore belong to an earlier time. Be the precise order of their dates what it may, the quantity which Correggio did in his short life is quite as astonishing as the multitude of Raffaelle’s productions, especially when we consider the number of assistants employed by the latter. Among his last works, Correggio painted two pictures for Federigo, Duke of Mantua; the subjects were Leda, and Venus, according to Vasari. The latter was probably the Mercury teaching Cupid to read, in which composition Venus is introduced; or it may have been the Jupiter and Antiope, now in the Louvre. Both are mentioned in the catalogue of Charles I., as having come from Mantua; and the Antiope is described as “a Sleeping Venus and Cupid, and a Satyr, &c., three entire figures, so big as the life.” The original Leda, much mutilated, is now at Potsdam; a repetition of the Danaë is in the Borghese palace in Rome; the Io, a picture of the same class, is supposed to have been destroyed, but repetitions of it exist in Vienna and in this country. The taste for such subjects, which, in Correggio’s time, was encouraged by the example of the great, is now reprobated as it deserves, and it is to be hoped will never be revived; but, in reference to the tendency of the painter’s taste and powers in the choice and treatment of subjects, it must be evident that the effect of soft transitions of light and shade, as opposed to the lively distinctness of colour and forms, is of itself allied to the voluptuous. The principle was applied by Correggio, as we have seen, in subjects of purity and sublimity: these, united with the soothing spell of his chiaro-scuro, and with forms of grace and beauty, excite a calm and pleasing impression by no means foreign to the end proposed; but the application was unfortunately still more successful where he united beauty and mystery in subjects addressed to very different feelings.

The Magdalen Reading, now at Dresden; the Christ praying in the Garden, in the possession of the Duke of Wellington; and the Ecce Homo; are all celebrated pictures of the best time of Correggio. The Ecce Homo, and the Mercury teaching Cupid to read, have lately been secured for the National Gallery; the first came from the Colonna palace at Rome, the other was purchased out of the collection of Charles I. by the Duke of Alva, in whose family it remained till it became the property of Murat; and a few years since it was restored to this country. The small picture of the Virgin and Child, in the National Gallery, is also a pleasing specimen of the master.

Vasari, who is silent as to the time of Correggio’s death, relates an absurd story of the manner in which it happened, now scarcely worth contradicting. According to him, the painter received a payment of sixty crowns in copper, which he carried from Parma to Correggio, and caught a fever in consequence from over-fatigue, of which he died. The sum thus paid in copper is computed to exceed two hundredweight! This incident, unobjectionable in a work of fiction, is introduced in an interesting drama called ‘Correggio,’ by the Danish poet Oehlenschläger. The researches of Pungileoni have proved that Correggio died in easy, if not in affluent circumstances. The exclamations of Annibale Caracci, in some of his letters, respecting the unhappy fate of Correggio, amount only to regret that he was confined to a comparatively remote part of Italy, and that he was not known in Rome or Florence, where his talents would undoubtedly have been still better rewarded.

This great painter died almost suddenly, at his native place, of a malignant fever, March 6, 1534, in the forty-first year of his age. He was buried in the Franciscan convent of the Frati Minori at Correggio, where the record of his death was found.

For a full account of Correggio and his works, the history of Pungileoni, above mentioned, may be consulted. It was published at Parma, in three octavo volumes, in 1817, 1818, and 1821. The best account in English is contained in an anonymous work, entitled, “Sketches of the Lives of Correggio and Parmegiano.”—1823.

The original, from which our engraving is taken, is a face painted on the wall adjoining the Cathedral door at Parma, by Correggio himself, from which it was copied, with the necessary additions to suit it for an engraving, by J. B. Davis, Esq.

[Virgin and Child.]

NAPOLEON
Engraved by W. Holl.
From a Picture by F. Gerard
in the possession of the Publisher.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall East.

NAPOLEON.

Born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, August 15, 1769. He was the eldest but one of a family of thirteen children; and his father, who was poor, though well descended, gladly embraced an opportunity of sending him to the Military College at Brienne, in France. Here he was noted for aversion to the society of his fellows, and to the amusements of boyhood. He was fond of imitating the operations of war, and displayed an unusual taste for the study of history and civil government; but he made no extraordinary progress in any branch of his education, except mathematics, in which he succeeded so well, that in his fifteenth year he was selected for removal to the Royal Military School at Paris. There he so zealously devoted himself to military studies, that on completing his sixteenth year he received his commission as Lieutenant of Artillery.

He remained unknown, and with little chance of promotion, until after the overthrow of the French monarchy in 1793. In the excesses of the Revolution he did not share; but his Jacobinical principles, which he advocated in a pamphlet entitled the ‘Supper of Beaucaire,’ recommended him to Robespierre and his colleagues, and, in conjunction with his reputation as an engineer, procured him the command of the artillery at the siege of Toulon, the capture of which was wholly owing to his skill. He mainly contributed to the success of the French arms on the Italian frontier; but the honour and the rewards were gathered by his superiors: and, in 1794, on the downfall of Robespierre’s government, he was deprived of his command as chief of battalion. For a time he remained in a state of neglect and poverty; and, without prospect of immediate advancement, indulged alternately in visionary schemes of greatness, and sober plans for obtaining a moderate competency. In 1795, his fortunes were suddenly advanced by the danger of the French Government, which, at the suggestion of Barras, entrusted to him the defence of the Tuileries against the National Guard and mob of Paris, on the 13th Vendémiaire (October 4th). The authority of the Government was restored by the successful exertions of Buonaparte; and, in requital for this service, he was made General of the Army of the Interior. This office soon ceased to afford scope for his abilities; and the Directory, aware of the necessity of employing his ardent talents, appointed him General of the Army of Italy, then opposed to the Austrians. A few days before his departure from Paris he married Josephine, the widow of Viscount Beauharnois, an amiable woman, who by her talents and graces assisted in advancing his fortunes, and during some years exercised great influence over him.

Buonaparte entered Italy early in 1796, passing between the Alps and the Apennines. In the course of eighteen months he made six successful campaigns, destroyed five Austrian armies, and conquered nearly the whole of Italy. He obliged the Pope and other Italian sovereigns to send their choicest treasures of art to Paris, a measure imitated from ancient Rome, and savouring more of the spirit of ancient conquest, than of the mitigated warfare of modern times. Among the more memorable battles fought during this war, were those of Lodi, Roveredo, Arcole, Rivoli, and Tagliamento. Buonaparte’s activity and skill counterbalanced the numerical inferiority of his troops; and his personal courage, and readiness of resources under difficulties, procured him a great ascendency over the soldiery, by whom he was familiarly called the “Little Corporal.” At the conclusion of this war, in 1797, the territories of Venice were divided between France and Austria, the Pope was deprived of part of his temporal dominions, and a number of the conquered states were united to form the Cisalpine Republic. His military talents being now no longer needed, Buonaparte was obliged to resign his command. Hitherto he had professed a warm attachment to the democracy, and even sided with that party in the revolution of the 18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797), when the democratic members of the Directory deposed their colleagues. His conduct in remodelling some of the Italian governments threw a doubt on the sincerity of his democratic principles, which was latterly increased by the assertion of the dignity of his rank amongst his officers, and by his tenacious resistance to every attempt made by the Directory to divide or control his power in the command of the army.

He returned to Paris in January, 1798; and although keenly attentive to the state of the various political parties, he maintained a prudent reserve, adopting the appearance and pursuits of a private citizen. Finding no immediate chance of obtaining a share in the Government, and that he was daily incurring suspicion, he again sought military employment. Being satisfied at this period of the impracticability of invading England, he projected the conquest of Egypt. For this purpose, in May, 1798, a splendid armament was equipped at Toulon, with every requisite for colonizing the country and prosecuting scientific and antiquarian researches. He reached Egypt in July, expelled, after several hard-fought battles, the dominant military caste of Mamelukes, and made subjects of the native Egyptians. His administration, except in an absurd attempt to conciliate the natives by professing Mahometanism, was that of a wise and politic statesman; and there was every prospect that the French, although insulated from Europe by the destruction of their fleet at Aboukir, would permanently establish themselves in Egypt. Many improvements, by which the country has since derived signal benefit, were introduced by him; and to the scientific department of the expedition we are indebted for the foundation of our present knowledge of the natural history and antiquities of Egypt. Early in 1799, Buonaparte apprized Tippoo Saib of his design of marching against the British in India. The hostilities of the Ottoman Porte induced him, however, to invade Syria. After crossing the desert, and taking El-Arish, Jaffa, and Gaza, he was repulsed at Acre by Sir Sidney Smith, and compelled to make a disastrous retreat on Egypt. Jaffa is remarkable for two occurrences which have deeply affected the fame of Buonaparte. One of these is the massacre of a large body of Turkish prisoners, who were shot under the pretext that they had previously been liberated at El-Arish upon parole not to serve against the French. The other is his ordering some of his own soldiers, who were incurably sick of the plague, to be poisoned with opium, rather than abandon them to the enemy, or endanger the rest of the army by transporting them with it. The suggestion was certainly made; but it appears equally certain that it was not acted on, in consequence of the remonstrances of the medical officers. The retreat was closed by a battle at Alexandria, in which the Turkish army was totally defeated.

The French rule being established in Egypt, Buonaparte became very anxious to return to France, where circumstances seemed to favour his ambition. He left his army secretly in August, and arrived in Paris in October, having by singular good fortune escaped the British cruisers, and evaded the impediments imposed by the quarantine laws. He was received with joy by the people, now weary of the feeble administration of the Directory, which, having lost all the late conquests, could preserve their country neither against invasion from abroad, nor from anarchy at home.

Three weeks after his return, Buonaparte overthrew the existing Government by a conspiracy, in which he was assisted by all men of military or political eminence, with very few exceptions: and, with a general concurrence, he was invested with the supreme executive authority, under the title of First Consul of France. His nominal colleagues soon became the mere instruments of his ambition. Although he left France only the semblance of a free government, it cannot be denied that Buonaparte was, in some respects, a real benefactor to the state. Social order was maintained. The public exercise of religion was restored, and a treaty, termed the Concordat, was concluded with the Pope, by which the French Church was released from the supremacy hitherto claimed and exercised by the Holy See. A uniform code of laws, which recognised no adventitious distinctions, henceforth afforded equal protection to the whole community; office and power were fairly opened to the competition of merit, and the Legion of Honour was instituted for the reward of talent and worth in every class of life. Buonaparte restrained the contentions of parties, and rendered their leaders, such as Talleyrand, Carnot, Fouché, Moreau, and Bernadotte, subservient to his interests; whilst the people, enjoying the benefit of an able and safe administration, were indifferent to their ruler’s schemes for personal aggrandizement.

Having restored peace and security at home, Buonaparte sought to gratify the national thirst for glory by foreign victories. In 1800, he marched an army across the Alps by the route of the Great St. Bernard, descended unexpectedly on the rear of the Austrians, and, June 14, gave them a complete overthrow at Marengo. Having recovered nearly all the former conquests of the French by this battle, he returned to Paris to avail himself of this triumph to advance his power. But the rejection of the overtures of the Bourbons, and the obvious design of Buonaparte to appropriate the crown to himself, led to a union between the Royalists and Jacobins; and plots were formed against his life, from one of which he narrowly escaped. In November he resumed hostilities against Austria; and the battle of Hohenlinden, gained by Moreau, December 2, concluded the war. Austria then acknowledged the Cisalpine Republic, and permitted France to possess the boundary of the Rhine, and to annex Holland to her dominions. The war, continued by England, was distinguished for the battle of Copenhagen, fought April 2, 1801, by which the Northern Maritime Confederacy was broken up; and for the recovery of Egypt from the French by the army of Abercrombie: it was ended in 1802, by the Treaty of Amiens. A short interval of peace ensued, during which Buonaparte strengthened his personal power by becoming First Consul for life, with the right of naming his successor. He also constituted himself President of the Italian and Helvetian Republics, by which these states became in fact provinces of France.

In 1803, Great Britain, provoked by the restlessness of Buonaparte’s ambition, again declared war against France. The First Consul answered this declaration by imprisoning about ten thousand English subjects, who were travelling in his dominions. He also seized the Electorate of Hanover, and made vast preparations for invading England. Early in 1804, the Royalist and Jacobin parties again endangered his life. Amongst the conspirators were Pichegru and Moreau; the latter, however, was not privy to any design of assassination. These plots also proved abortive, and, in crushing them, Buonaparte increased the stability of his power. He established a special commission for the trial of all persons suspected of political crimes, without resorting to the ordinary courts of judicature. He believed, or affected to believe, that the recent plots were promoted by the Bourbons and the British ministers, and resolved to retaliate. By his orders the Duc d’Enghien was carried off, in March, 1804, from the neutral state of Baden, and, after an informal trial, put to death. He seized the British minister at Hamburgh, and confined him for a short period in the Temple. Captain Wright, a British naval officer, was also confined in the Temple, upon pretext that his ship had been captured while in the service of the Bourbon conspirators: he was said to have been murdered in prison; but there is no proof of this improbable crime. It was asserted that Pichegru perished in the same way.

In December, 1804, the First Consul assumed the titles of Napoleon, Emperor of the French and King of Italy. The Pope assisted in the ceremony of his coronation at Notre Dame: but Napoleon placed the crown on his own and his consort’s head with his own hand. In like manner, in May, 1805, he crowned himself King of Italy at Milan. In this year, Austria, Russia, and Sweden formed an alliance with England against France. In the same year, October 21, the naval power of France was destroyed by the battle of Trafalgar. But on the other hand, in a single campaign, which was concluded, December 2, by the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon overthrew the fabric of the German empire, and obliged the other members of the coalition to separate from England and sue for peace. He then associated Bavaria, Wirtemberg, the Grand Duchy of Berg, and several smaller German states, under the title of the Confederation of the Rhine, of which he constituted himself Protector, receiving in return the services of about sixty thousand soldiers. Venice was added to the kingdom of Italy; while Joseph and Louis Buonaparte were appointed respectively kings of Naples and Holland. At the conclusion of this war Napoleon created a new order of nobility; many of whom bore foreign titles, and received extended grants in the territories recently conquered by France. He was now surrounded by men of the most opposite character and principles, yet all so well chosen for aptitude to their several offices that he was devotedly and efficiently served. He had a keen perception of talent in others, and judgment in giving it a suitable direction: not a few of his ablest followers, among them, Lannes, Junot, Murat, Victor, Augereau, and Soult, were of humble origin. Napoleon usurped the entire control of the civil and ecclesiastical polity, and by means of compulsory laws for military service, and the suppression of public opinion by an inquisitorial police and an enslaved press, established a complete despotism in France. In arrogating the style and pretensions of the Emperor Charlemagne, he desired to bury all remembrance of the late dynasty, and of his own origin. He had a strong tendency to fatalism, and believed that his career depended on destiny. This weakness was often manifested in those inflated bulletins, which announced his deeds in a manner calculated to impress the belief of his infallibility, and never acknowledged the occurrence of reverses.

Prussia had been induced to remain neutral during the war of which we have just spoken, by a promise of the cession of Hanover. Instead of fulfilling this engagement, Napoleon, by a series of injuries, provoked a declaration of war in 1806. Prussia was subjugated by the battle of Jena, fought October 14th: and Napoleon then marched into Poland against the Emperor of Russia; whom, after several battles, at Pultusk, Preuss-Eylau, and Friedland, he compelled to sue for peace. By the treaty of Tilsit, Prussia was dismembered, her sovereign retaining but a scanty portion of his dominions. Jerome Buonaparte received the kingdom of Westphalia, which was formed from the Prussian and Hanoverian territories, whilst the Prusso-Polish provinces were formed into the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and bestowed on Napoleon’s ally the Elector of Saxony, who was also gratified with the title of King.

The want of a navy rendering Napoleon unable to contend with England, he endeavoured to separate her from the European world. In 1806, by certain decrees issued at Berlin and Milan, and acknowledged at the Treaty of Tilsit by every continental power, England was declared in a state of blockade, and all articles of English growth and manufacture were excluded from their ports. But as the rigid enforcement of these decrees was prevented by the access of the English to the Peninsula, Napoleon devised a scheme for rendering this part of Europe also amenable to his authority. In 1807 a treaty was concluded with Spain; and, by a joint invasion of the Spanish and French forces, Portugal was subdued and the House of Braganza expelled. But under pretext of supporting this invasion, Napoleon filled the most important military stations in Spain with his own troops. The royal family were enticed into France, and compelled by threats of violence to renounce all claims to their hereditary throne. Joseph Buonaparte, resigning the kingdom of Naples to Murat, repaired to Madrid, and was crowned king of Spain. But a fierce war breaking out between Joseph and his new subjects, the French, who had already been driven from Portugal by Sir Arthur Wellesley, seemed on the point of losing the whole Peninsula. Napoleon, in a campaign which he conducted in person, re-established his power in the Peninsula; but a declaration of war by Austria recalled him in mid-conquest. He hurried to the German frontier, and, after beating the Austrians at Abensberg, Landshut, and Eckmuhl, and taking Vienna, concluded the war by the battle of Wagram, fought July 6, 1809. A treaty was signed at Schoënbrun in October, by which Austria made great sacrifices of territory and population. At Schoënbrun Napoleon narrowly escaped death by the hand of a young German enthusiast, named Stabbs. During this war, Rome was annexed to France, as the second city of the empire; and the Pope, thus entirely stripped of his temporal dominions, was soon after removed to Fontainebleau, where he was confined as a prisoner.

Desirous of an heir to succeed to his vast empire, Napoleon, on his return from Schoënbrun, divorced his empress, and, in accordance with one of the articles of the late treaty, married Maria Louisa, daughter of the Emperor of Austria, in March, 1810. This marriage was followed, in 1811, by the birth of a son, who was styled King of Rome. Although Napoleon remained in Paris in attendance on his new consort, his plans of ambition suffered no interruption. In 1810 he deposed his brother Louis, who thought too much of the welfare of his own subjects; and annexed Holland, together with the Hanse Towns and the whole sea-coast of Germany, to the French empire. The election of the French Marshal Bernadotte to the crown of Sweden seemed to place all Europe, except England, Russia, and the Peninsula, in the power of France. On the departure of Napoleon from Spain, in 1809, England again attempted to deliver the Peninsula; and, during the two succeeding years, Wellington did much towards effecting this object. The Emperor of Russia, who, at the treaty of Tilsit, was supposed to have agreed with Napoleon on the division of the European world, now found the power of the latter dangerous to his own kingdom, which also suffered greatly from the prohibition of commerce with England. Napoleon, perceiving that his brother Emperor designed to avail himself of the reverses in the Peninsula to insist on a more liberal course of policy, and security against future aggression, determined on war. In 1812 he invaded Russia, with the largest army that had ever been assembled under one European leader. After beating the Russians at Smolensko and Borodino, he took possession of Moscow, September 14. But the approach of winter, the burning of the city, and the consequent want of food and shelter, rendered it impossible to remain there; and the Czar refusing to listen to proposals for peace, Napoleon, after five weeks’ residence at Moscow, was obliged to withdraw. In the celebrated retreat which followed, the French army was utterly destroyed, more by the climate than by the enemy; the Emperor himself escaped with difficulty.

The spirit of the French people was roused by this disaster, and Napoleon speedily found himself at the head of another vast army. But Prussia and Sweden now joined the league against him, and experience had made his enemies more fit to cope with him; and though, in 1813, he won the battles of Lutzen and Bautzen in Saxony, he derived no material advantage from them. Having refused to accede to the terms proposed through the mediation of Austria, which would have restricted France to her ancient power and boundaries, this state also took part with the allies against him. After gaining the battle of Dresden, in August, Napoleon was compelled, by the successive defeat of four of his Marshals, to abandon his position on the Elbe, and retire on Leipsic. In October was fought the great battle of Leipsic, where, in three days, the French lost upwards of fifty thousand men. The Emperor then retreated across the Rhine. The Rhenish Confederacy was forthwith dissolved, and the Pope and Ferdinand were permitted to return to their respective dominions.

Napoleon having thus lost all his allies and foreign possessions, still refused the reasonable terms of peace which were offered to him, and prepared to defend France against invasion. Wellington crossed the Pyrenees in 1814, and about the same time the Russian and German armies passed the Rhine. During this campaign Napoleon showed wonderful energy in encountering his numerous enemies, but still adhered, with obstinate arrogance, to what he considered due to his own personal glory, and refused to treat for peace. After losing the battles of Brienne and La Rothière, in February, he entered on a negotiation with the Allies; during the discussion of which he attacked and defeated the Prussians on the Marne: and, on the 17th and 18th, with a perfect knowledge that his minister had signed the preliminaries of peace, he assaulted the Austrians and defeated them at Nangis and Montereau. These successes were useless, and only served to exasperate his foes. In March he was beaten at the battles of Craonne and Laon, and finding the Allies getting the superiority, he skilfully marched on their rear with the view of inclosing them between his own army and the capital. But the Allies obtained possession of Paris, and finding the people alienated by the tyranny of the Emperor, declared they would no more treat with Napoleon Buonaparte. The weakened state of his army, and the defection of most of his ministers and generals, left him without resources. On the 11th of April Napoleon renounced, for himself and his heirs, the thrones of France and Italy. He was allowed to retain the title of Emperor, and received the sovereignty of the island of Elba.

He reached his miniature kingdom May 4; and for a time appeared to occupy himself as intently with its affairs as if they had equalled in importance those of his late empire. But perceiving that the Bourbon government caused great discontent, he suddenly returned to France, and landed at Cannes, March 1, 1815, accompanied by about seven hundred soldiers. He reached Lyons on the 10th, and resumed the functions of sovereignty. On the 17th he was joined by Marshal Ney and a large body of men, and on the 19th by the army of Macdonald. The following day he entered Paris. He was immediately declared an outlaw by the Allied Powers, who, with upwards of a million of soldiers, prepared to dethrone him. Although he made many specious promises of freedom and good government, the feelings and interests of the people were opposed to him; and, after the decisive battle of Waterloo, he was again obliged to abdicate. Being foiled in attempting to escape to America, he took refuge in a British ship of war. The British Government rejecting his proposal to reside in England, it was determined that the rest of his life should be passed in the island of St. Helena, with the observances of etiquette due to a general officer. He arrived at St. Helena, October 15, 1815. A few courtiers and domestics attended him in his exile, and by them the form and ceremony of a court were always maintained. His ambition was not corrected by past experience, and he was continually forming plans for returning to Europe. His escape from the island was strictly guarded against. This exposed him to an unpleasant degree of superintendence, which he did not bear with the calmness of a great mind. Of the Governor’s conduct it is unnecessary to speak: but Napoleon’s constant and undignified disputes with that officer concerning the regulations for his personal treatment, lowered his character, while they added to the bitterness of his captivity. In the last year of his life Napoleon lost all his cheerfulness and disposition for active employment. He died, May 5, 1821, of a cancerous affection of the liver, and was borne, by a party of British grenadiers, to his grave in a secluded valley on the island.

Napoleon Buonaparte was short in stature, but handsome and well formed, and capable of enduring great fatigue and great vicissitudes of climate. We abstain from offering a summary of his character, as we have abstained for the most part from passing judgment upon his actions. The time is not yet come for him to be judged dispassionately. A multitude of books have been written concerning him, with the more important of which most readers are familiar.

The picture from which our engraving is taken was formerly in the collection at Malmaison, from whence it was purchased, on the restoration of the Bourbons, by Mr. Hamlet.

[Statue of Napoleon, by Canova.]

Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff.
LINNÆUS.
From a Copy by Pasch in the possession of R. Brown, Esq^re.
of the original at the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

LINNÆUS.

Carl von Linné, commonly called Linnæus, was born at Rashult, in the province of Smaland, in Sweden, May 24, 1707. His father, the Protestant minister of the parish of Stenbrohult, was a collector of curious plants; and Carl soon became acquainted with the plants in his father’s garden, as well as with the indigenous species in the neighbourhood. Being intended for the church, he was placed, first at the Latin school, and then at the Gymnasium of the neighbouring town of Wexio; but he neglected his professional studies to devote himself almost exclusively to the physical sciences. Botany, which was then little cultivated in Sweden, more particularly engrossed his attention: he formed a small library of botanical works, and although unable to comprehend some of the authors he possessed, yet he continued to read them day and night. He even learnt some of them by heart, and acquired, among his teachers and fellow scholars, the name of the Little Botanist. His father, whose object was to fit his son for gaining a livelihood in his own sacred calling, and who was ill able to defray the expenses of a learned education, was greatly mortified by this misapplication of time. He determined therefore, without wasting, as he considered it, any more money, to employ Carl in some manual occupation. His design was changed by the interference of Dr. Rothman, a physician of Wexio, who advised him, instead of forcing his son into a profession for which he had no taste, to let him follow the study of medicine and natural history. Rothman rendered this scheme practicable, by taking Carl into his own house for a twelvemonth; during which he instructed the youth in physiology, and likewise upon the right method of studying his favourite science of botany, according to the system of Tournefort.

Linnæus was equally fortunate in gaining admission into the family of Dr. Stobæus, professor of physic and botany at the University of Lund, whither he repaired in 1727. Here he pursued his botanical studies with zeal, and acquired the esteem and affection of his host. He went to the University of Upsal in 1728, by advice of his early friend Dr. Rothman, hoping to obtain some situation in it. But he was disappointed: and, his scanty means being soon exhausted, he found reason to repent of having quitted the friendly roof of Stobæus, who was much offended that a pupil, whom he had treated so kindly, should have left the University without consulting him. A fortunate incident relieved him from this state of anxious suspense. One day, in the autumn of 1729, while examining some plants in the University Garden, he was accosted by an aged clergyman, Dr. Olaf Celsius; who, after some inquiry into the nature and extent of his botanical studies, received him into his own house, and employed him to assist in a work on the plants mentioned in Scripture, and to collect botanical specimens around Upsal.

Linnæus enjoyed great advantages in his new situation. He had the full use of an extensive library, rich in botanical works; he lived on most familiar terms with his patron, by whom he was introduced to Dr. Rudbeck, the professor of botany; and Rudbeck, obliged by age to execute the duties of his office by deputy, obtained that office for Linnæus in 1730. The young man’s reputation as a naturalist was now established in the University; and, in 1731, the Royal Academy of Sciences at Upsal deputed him to make a tour through Lapland, with the sole view of examining the natural productions of that desolate region. He set out, on horseback, May 12, 1732 (O.S.) without incumbrances of any kind, and bearing all his luggage at his back. In the flower of youth, bold, enterprising, and in robust health, he was well adapted to traverse the wild countries of northern Sweden and Lapland, in which he met with some romantic and dangerous adventures. When in the districts of Pithea and Lulea, on the Gulf of Bothnia, he was near perishing from a danger of which he has given the following animated account:—

“Several days ago the forests had been set on fire by lightning, and the flames raged at this time with great violence, owing to the drought of the season. I traversed a space, three quarters of a mile in extent, which was entirely burnt, so that the place, instead of appearing in her gay and verdant attire, was in deep sable: a spectacle more abhorrent to my feelings than to see her clad in the white livery of winter. The fire was nearly extinguished in most of the spots we visited, except in ant-hills and dry trunks of trees. After we had travelled about half-a-quarter of a mile across one of these scenes of desolation, the wind began to blow with rather more force, upon which a sudden noise arose in the half-burnt forest, such as I can only compare to what may be imagined among a large army attacked by an enemy: we knew not whither to turn our steps. The smoke would not suffer us to remain where we stood, nor durst we turn back. It seemed best to hasten forward, in hopes of speedily reaching the outskirts of the wood; but in this we were disappointed. We ran as fast as we could, in order to avoid being crushed by the falling trees, some of which threatened us every minute. Sometimes the fall of a huge trunk was so sudden that we stood aghast, not knowing whither to turn to escape destruction, and throwing ourselves entirely on the protection of Providence. In one instance a large tree fell exactly between me and my guide, who walked not more than a fathom from me; but, thanks to God! we both escaped in safety. We were not a little rejoiced when this perilous adventure ended, for we had felt all the time like a couple of outlaws, in momentary fear of surprise.”

In the space of five months Linnæus performed, mostly on foot, a journey of 3798 English miles, and with the approach of winter he returned to Upsal. On that occasion he was admitted a member of the Academy, and received about ten pounds for his expenses. The ‘Flora Lapponica’ was the result of this journey. Scarce recovered from the fatigues of this tour through Lapland, he again felt the pressure of poverty. He commenced a course of lectures on the assaying of metals, but his success excited the jealousy of Dr. Rosen, the successor of Dr. Rudbeck, who insisted that, in conformity with the statutes, Linnæus should no longer be allowed to lecture. The Senate had no choice but to enforce the statutes, and this severe blow deprived Linnæus of all present means of advancement. He quitted Upsal, and took up his residence at Fahlun, the capital of Dalecarlia, where he gave lectures on assaying to the copper miners of that district. In 1735, having saved a small sum of money, he resolved to travel, and take a medical degree at some foreign university. He bent his course through Hamburgh to Holland, and obtained the degree of M.D., at the little University of Harderwych. He gained the friendship of Gronovius and Boërhaave, by whom he was strongly urged to settle in Holland, then in the height of its commercial prosperity. But Linnæus’ mind was set upon returning to Sweden, where he had formed an attachment to the eldest daughter of Dr. Moræus, a physician at Fahlun. Intending to pass homewards through Amsterdam, he obtained from Boërhaave an introduction to an eminent botanist, Dr. Burman, with whom he resided for a short time. During this visit he became acquainted with Mr. Clifford, a rich burgomaster of Amsterdam, who had a magnificent country-seat and garden at Hartecamp, near Haarlem. This gentleman wished for the assistance of a man who could arrange his collections of natural history, and put his garden into order. Linnæus entered into his employment in this capacity, and the connexion proved equally satisfactory to both parties.

In 1736, Linnæus made a tour to England at the expense of Mr. Clifford, who wished him to inspect the gardens of our country, and to communicate with the eminent botanists then alive. The English professors were warmly attached to the system of Ray; but Dillenius, the botanical professor at Oxford, was so impressed with the talents of Linnæus, that he urged him to take up his residence there, offering to share the profits of his professorship with him. Professor Martyn of Cambridge, Miller, Collinson, &c., held friendly intercourse with him, and he returned to Holland with the most favourable impressions of the scientific men in England. Contrary to the wishes of Mr. Clifford, he left Hartecamp towards the close of 1737, with the intention of returning to Sweden. No stronger proof can be given of the estimation in which Linnæus was held in Holland than the regard expressed for him by Boërhaave, even on his death-bed. Before the time of Linnæus’ intended departure from Leyden, Boërhaave became too ill to admit visitors. Linnæus was the only person in whose favour an exception was made, that the dying physician might bid him an affectionate farewell. “I have lived,” he said, “my time out, and my days are at an end; I have done every thing that was in my power: May God protect thee! What the world required of me it has got; but from thee it expects much more. Farewell, my dear Linnæus!”

When upon the point of leaving Leyden, Linnæus was attacked by illness; and upon his recovery he determined to visit Paris before his return to Sweden. At Paris he experienced great kindness from the Jussieus; and he received the high compliment of being elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences.

In the summer of 1738, he embarked at Rouen for Helsingburg. Soon after his arrival in Sweden, he married the lady to whom he had been so long attached.

Dr. Pulteney, in his “View of the Writings of Linnæus,” gives a full account of the numerous publications put forth by him during his residence in Holland, and adds,—“It is scarcely to be conceived how this great man found time to finish so many works, any one of which would have been sufficient for establishing his character as a botanist.” The most important of these were the “Systema Naturæ,” 1735, and the “Genera Plantarum,” 1737, in which the sexual system of plants is fully developed.

In 1738 Linnæus settled as a physician at Stockholm, where he met with so much opposition, that he almost resolved to quit his native country. But by perseverance he worked his way into practice; and he was fortunate enough to be employed by the Queen of Sweden. In 1739 he contributed, with some other spirited persons, to form an Academy at Stockholm, of which he was elected President.

His professional success did not lead him aside from his favourite studies; and he kept his eye steadily on the great object of his ambition, the botanical chair at Upsal. In 1741 he was appointed medical professor. He soon entered into an agreement with Professor Rosen to allow him to perform the duties of the botanical chair, while his colleague lectured on physiology and other subjects. Before entering on the duties of his professorship, he pronounced a Latin oration before the University, “On the Necessity of Travelling in our own Country.”

Linnæus was now placed in the situation which of all things he had most coveted. The academical garden was soon laid out on a new plan. When he was appointed professor, it did not contain above fifty exotic plants. In 1748, six years afterwards, he published a catalogue, from which it appears that he had introduced eleven hundred; besides the vegetable productions of Sweden itself.

He now applied to all his correspondents for plants; and, writing to Albert Haller, he says, “Formerly I had plants, but no money; and now, of what use is my money without plants?” His exertions so much extended the fame of the University, that the number of students considerably increased, particularly during the time he held the office of rector. They came from Russia, Norway, Denmark, Great Britain, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and even from America. He made summer excursions attended by his pupils, often to the number of two hundred. When some rare or remarkable plant, or other natural curiosity, was found, a signal was given by a horn, at which the whole party assembled round their leader.

Linnæus published his “Amœnitates Academicæ,” “Philosophia Botanica,” and “Species Plantarum,” respectively in 1749, 1751, and 1753. Of these, the first is a collection of treatises on various subjects; the second is the foundation of the Linnæan system of botany, and from it most of our popular introductions have been compiled; the third is termed, by Haller, “Maximum opus, et æternum!” In this work he first employed trivial words as specific names: thus, the species of every genus is designated by a single epithet, expressive of some obvious character, and the tiresome plan of quoting an entire description to distinguish the species was abandoned. His fame had now rapidly increased, and his scientific connexions and correspondence with foreign countries had become very extensive.

In 1753 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London; and in the same year his sovereign, Gustavus III., bestowed upon him a most flattering mark of his regard, by creating him a Knight of the Polar Star. This order had never before been conferred on any literary character; nor had any person below the rank of a nobleman been honoured with it. Foreign countries were not backward in testifying their sense of his merits; he was a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, of St. Petersburgh, and of Berlin; and there was hardly a learned body in Europe but was anxious to enrol his name among their numbers. The most flattering compliment which he received was from the King of Spain, who invited him to settle at Madrid, with the offer of an annual pension for life of 2000 pistoles, letters of nobility, and the free exercise of his own religion. He, however, did not accept of this offer, but answered, that if he had any merit, his services were due to his own country.

The University of Upsal had now become an object of curiosity: strangers were attracted there, and prolonged their stay, solely with the view of becoming acquainted with Linnæus. Among other visitors, the Earl of Macartney, when he was English Minister at St. Petersburgh, went from that city on purpose to visit him. His writings were soon appreciated in foreign countries, and his system was first publicly taught in our own by Professor Martyn, in the University of Cambridge. His pupils spread themselves over the globe; they carried everywhere with them the spirit of their master, and diffused the love of natural history. When Captain Cook’s first voyage was undertaken, one of Linnæus’s most celebrated pupils, Dr. Solander, accompanied Mr. Banks in the capacity of naturalist. It was not, however, from his pupils alone that Linnæus received information; in every part of the world persons were found anxious to forward specimens to him, and his collections thus became unrivalled.

The introduction of the Linnæan system was attended with such great change, especially of nomenclature, that it experienced considerable opposition from the older naturalists; and the biographers of Linnæus have recorded several literary feuds with distinguished contemporaries, and especially with Albert Haller, a genius of equal merit with himself.

The latter years of Linnæus were spent in a state of ease, affluence, and honour, very different from the poverty and obscurity of his early life. He was one of those great men, who have shown by example how much the genius and activity of an individual are capable of accomplishing. He was the reformer of botany, and perhaps the greatest promoter of natural history that ever lived; and so much has never been done for that science, in so short a space of time, as at the period he flourished, and immediately after.

In 1773 the reigning King of Sweden appointed him, in conjunction with others, to make a new translation of the Bible into the Swedish language. In the month of May, 1774, whilst lecturing in the Botanical Garden, he was attacked by apoplexy, the debilitating effects of which obliged him to relinquish the more active parts of his professional duties, and to close his literary career. In 1776 a second apoplectic fit paralysed his right side and impaired his mental powers. Even in this painful and miserable state the study of nature remained his greatest pleasure, and he was constantly carried into his museum to survey the treasures there accumulated. He died January 10, 1778, in the seventy-first year of his age.

On his death a general mourning took place at Upsal. A medal was struck upon the occasion, and a monument erected to his memory in the cathedral church of Upsal. The King of Sweden himself pronounced a panegyric on his distinguished subject before the Royal Academy of Sweden.

Nature was eminently liberal in the endowments of Linnæus’s mind. He had a lively imagination; a correct judgment, guided by the strict laws of system; a most retentive memory; and unremitting industry. He laboured to inspire the great and opulent with a taste for natural history, and he wished particularly that ecclesiastics should have some knowledge of it. He thought such knowledge would sweeten retirement, and that pastors had great opportunities for observing nature. He was decidedly religious himself, and not one of his greater works begins or ends without some passage expressive of admiration for the Supreme Creator.

His strength and weakness alike consisted in a rigid adherence to system. He arranged, according to a system of his own invention, all natural objects, from man down to the simple crystals. The Linnæan school is more fitted to arrange and describe the materials of science than to extend its boundaries. Its pupils have too rigidly adhered to a system, which is ill adapted to our increased sphere of knowledge.

In botany, the merits of Linnæus were transcendent. He found it a chaos, and reduced it to a system, which enabled the student to study it with ease. The great objection to his arrangement, founded on the sexual parts of plants, is, that it is artificial, and has rather retarded the knowledge of a system more philosophical, and in stricter accordance with the rules of nature. The labours of the Jussieus and De Candolle have done much to introduce a better system; but much still is wanting to complete it.

After the death of Linnæus’s only son, in November, 1783, the late eminent botanist, Sir James Smith, purchased his museum of natural history, books, and manuscripts, for 1029l. This collection consisted of nearly everything possessed by the great Linnæus and his son. Sir James Smith directed in his will that these treasures should be offered, after his own death, to the Linnæan Society of London. They were accordingly purchased by that body for 3000 guineas; and are now placed in the Society’s rooms in London.

This memoir is compiled almost entirely from a Life of Linnæus written for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and from the article ‘Linnæus,’ in the ‘Biographie Universelle,’ by the late Baron Cuvier.

[Linnæus in his Lapland dress.]

Engraved by W. Holl.
PRIESTLEY.
From a Picture by Gilbert Stewart
in the possession of T. B. Barclay, Esq^r. of Liverpool.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall East.

PRIESTLEY.

It was the fortune of this eminent philosopher, in the course of a long, uncompromising advocacy of his own views of truth, to become prominently engaged in controversy on those two great sources of discord, religion and politics. He was grossly maltreated by those who disapproved of his doctrines; and, as the natural consequence, he was regarded with warm, not to say immoderate, admiration by his friends. His opinions, however, were the result of patient inquiry, instituted and pursued, as we believe, with a sincere desire to arrive at truth; and therefore he is entitled to be treated with respect, even by those who think his opinions of pernicious tendency. A good life of such a man can hardly satisfy both friends and enemies. It is, however, as a man of science, not as a party disputant, that Priestley is entitled to a place here; and we shall therefore hold ourselves excused from entering at length into his political or theological controversies.

Joseph Priestley was born at Fieldhead, near Leeds, March 13, 1733, O.S. His father was of middle rank, engaged in the woollen manufactures of the neighbourhood. His mother died while he was still a child: but this loss was alleviated by the kindness of his paternal aunt, who undertook the care of his education from the time that he was nine years old. He underwent some disadvantage, in being shifted about from one tutor to another; but being of a studious turn, he made considerable progress in the study of ancient and modern languages, Asiatic as well as European, of mathematics, metaphysics, and other branches of learning; so that he was found to be unusually well informed, on his admission at the Dissenting Academy at Daventry, in 1752. His father and his aunt were Calvinistic Dissenters, and Priestley was brought up in an unusually strict observance of all the external duties of religion. He acknowledges in his memoirs an obligation to this course of life, as having early given him a serious turn of mind, but without recommending a similar course for general adoption. As was natural, he imbibed the principles of Calvinism; and suffered at one time severe uneasiness, because he could not realize in his mind those feelings which he had been taught to consider as the index of salvation. This we mention, because it shows that his early prepossessions were diametrically opposed to that system of religion to which he ultimately worked his way.

For three years Priestley continued at Daventry, labouring sedulously in studying to qualify himself for the ministry. At the end of that time, he accepted an invitation to become assistant preacher to a dissenting congregation at Needham Market, near Ipswich. His residence there, a period of three years more, was one of considerable want and difficulty. His stipulated salary amounted only to 40l., and was so ill paid, that his receipts generally fell short of 30l.: insomuch that, without occasional assistance, procured from different charities by his friends, he could scarcely have subsisted. This deficiency arose partly from the poverty of the congregation, partly from his own unpopularity. His religious views, which, during his abode at Daventry, had changed to Arianism, did not accord with those of his hearers; and he laboured under an impediment of speech. Yet, notwithstanding these unfavourable circumstances, he says, “I was far from being unhappy at Needham. I firmly believed that a wise Providence was disposing every thing for the best, and I applied with great assiduity to my studies, which were classical, mathematical, and theological. These required but few books. As to experimental philosophy, I had always cultivated an acquaintance with it, but I had not the means of prosecuting it.” The result of his theological studies was a still more decided rejection of the doctrines in which he had been brought up In his own words, “I had become, in consequence of much pains and thought, persuaded of the falsity of the doctrine of atonement, of the inspiration of the authors of the books of scripture as writers, and of all idea of supernatural influence, except for the purpose of miracles. But I was still an Arian, having never turned my attention to the Socinian doctrine, and contenting myself with seeing the absurdity of the Trinitarian system.”

Priestley’s situation was somewhat improved by an invitation to Nantwich, in Cheshire, in 1758. He remained there for three years, engaged in the double duty of preaching and keeping a school; and then accepted an appointment as tutor of languages in the Dissenting Academy newly established at Warrington. Not confining himself to the strict letter of his duties, he composed and delivered lectures on the theory of language, oratory, and criticism; on history in general, and on the history, laws, and constitution of England. It is a remarkable instance of his versatility and activity of mind, that, in addition to this extensive course of study, he undertook to write his History of Electricity, a subject with which he then was little acquainted, and finished it within a year, though in the course of the work he had been led into a large field of original experiments. After a residence of six years, the situation affording him a bare livelihood, he removed to Leeds, and took the charge of Mill Hill Chapel, in September, 1767.

At Leeds, Priestley resided for another period of six years, actively employed in clerical and scientific labours. Here his experiments on fixed air were undertaken, and published. He undertook a History of Discoveries relating to Vision, Light, and Colours, as part of a projected history of all the branches of experimental philosophy; but the sale of this portion was discouraging, and he abandoned the rest of the undertaking. He also published his well-known Chart of History, and wrote an Essay on Government, with other pieces, in addition to a great number of religious pamphlets. These various pursuits, with occasional visits to London, made him well known to literary men; and, by the friendship of Dr. Price, he was recommended to the Earl of Shelburne, as well qualified to fill the station of a literary companion and friend. In consequence, he removed to Calne in Wiltshire, close to that nobleman’s seat, Bowood. Nominally filling the office of librarian, and treated by Lord Shelburne with uniform respect and kindness, he had access to the best society, both at Bowood and in London: he also had the advantage of foreign travel. But at length a coldness grew up on the part of his patron; and at the end of seven years the connection was dissolved. By the terms of his agreement, Dr. Priestley became entitled to an annuity of 150l., which was punctually paid. Each party bore testimony to the honourable conduct of the other. The cause of this estrangement never was avowed; but it is probable that the boldness with which Priestley wrote in support of his peculiar metaphysical and religious doctrines may have displeased Lord Shelburne.

Induced by motives of family connection, Dr. Priestley now took up his residence at Birmingham. Local convenience and the society of various distinguished men, among whom James Watt was pre-eminent, rendered that town peculiarly suitable to his scientific pursuits, which, however, were never suffered to occupy him to the exclusion of theology. He undertook the ministry of a chapel. He revived the Theological Repository, which had been commenced and discontinued at Leeds. He composed and published his History of the Corruptions of Christianity. This work involved him in a well-known controversy with Dr. Horsley, who is commonly said to have owed his bishopric to his exertions in it. Priestley pursued the dispute in a history of early opinions concerning Jesus Christ; and for some time he wrote an annual pamphlet in answer to the attacks on Unitarianism. His intimate friend, Dr. Price, was the most distinguished among his opponents, and their controversy was carried on with eminent decency and candour. It was published in 1778, entitled “A free Discussion of the Doctrines of Materialism and Necessity, in a Correspondence between Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley, &c.” The Socinian tenets of the latter were again advocated in his General History of the Christian Church to the Fall of the Western Empire. These active labours in the field of controversy, backed by his general reputation, caused Priestley to be regarded as the leading person among the Dissenters, a body at that time distrusted by the government, and disliked by a large portion of their fellow-countrymen. The agitation of the repeal of the Test Act increased the prejudice against them, while it gave Priestley a fresh motive for exertion. Loud was the outcry, and bitter the hatred of the “Church and King” party. One of the clergy of Birmingham attacked him from the pulpit. To him and to another he replied in a series of Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham. At length party rage grew so high, that a meeting (at which Priestley was not present) being held by some persons, who looked favourably on the commencement of the French Revolution, July 14, 1791, to celebrate the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastile, the house in which they assembled was attacked by an infuriated mob. Dr. Priestley’s meeting-house and dwelling-house were the next objects of outrage; and the latter, with his valuable library, philosophical apparatus, papers, &c., was destroyed. The houses of several other Dissenters were more or less injured. He recovered a certain compensation for his losses; but the sum awarded, according to his statement, fell two thousand pounds short of their real amount. The liberality of his friends, however, more than made up the pecuniary deficiency. The French testified a warm sense of his ill-usage; and on the meeting of the National Convention, several of the departments invited him to become a member of it. This compliment he wisely declined.

Birmingham was no longer a pleasant, nor even a safe abode for the philosopher. He removed to Hackney, where the congregation of Dr. Price soon invited him to become the successor of his deceased friend. By degrees he replaced his philosophical instruments, and resumed his studies, hoping to finish his life without more removals. But as the French Revolution advanced, and political dissension in England ran higher and higher, his situation grew more unpleasant, and, in his estimation, more dangerous. He found himself shunned at the meetings of the Royal Society, and he ceased to attend them; he was harassed by threats and insults; he believed the violence of the high church party against him to be on the increase; he saw oppressive political prosecutions instituted against others, and thought himself a likely person to be marked for ruin. Above all, he found the evil repute into which he had fallen an effectual bar to the favourable establishment of his sons in England; and when they were gone to seek their fortunes in America, he resolved to follow them. He landed at New York in June, 1794, and shortly after settled at Northumberland, a town about one hundred and thirty miles N. W. of Philadelphia. There rejecting more than one advantageous offer of situations in the University of Philadelphia, he spent the remainder of life, continuing to the last his philosophical and theological studies. The chief fruit of these latter years was his General History of the Christian Church, in four volumes. After a gradual decline of strength, he died, February 6, 1804.

The private character of Priestley was such as to command respect. Modest, benevolent, pious, of studious and retired habits and unimpeached morals, the worst his enemies had to say of him was, that he taught heresy, and was an enemy of the established order of things. His works, not including those on scientific subjects, have recently been edited by Mr. Rutt, in twenty-five volumes 8vo., the first of which contains his own memoirs, illustrated by notes by the editor, and very numerous letters; and a catalogue of his publications in the order in which they appeared. The same memoirs, written by himself, in an unpretending and dispassionate style, and continued down to the author’s death, by his son Joseph Priestley, appeared in 1805, with an appendix, containing notices of his works and opinions. With respect to his philosophical merits, the eloge pronounced on him by Cuvier to the Institute, of which Priestley was an associate, in 1805, will command attention, like every production of its distinguished author.

In the space to which we are restricted, it will be impossible to give an adequate idea of the vast importance of Dr. Priestley’s chemical discoveries: they are justly regarded as forming the basis of our knowledge of pneumatic chemistry, and indeed of the science in general; for upon one of them alone, that of oxygen gas, is founded our acquaintance with the nature of air, earth, and water, and the same discovery has served also to explain the action of fire.

Dr. Priestley’s residence at Leeds was near a brewery; and his first pneumatic experiments were made on the carbonic acid gas, or fixed air, largely generated during fermentation. Gradually pursuing the subject, he examined various other aëriform bodies, and submitted to experiment numerous substances which were convertible into, or capable of yielding, air. These investigations led him to the discovery of new gaseous bodies, both elementary and compound. So little cultivated had been the field in which he commenced his researches, that he was under the necessity of imagining and constructing new instruments, in order to carry them on. To his inventive genius chemistry is indebted for the pneumatic trough, the method of receiving and retaining gases over mercury, and the process of combining and decomposing them by electricity. “The very implements,” Dr. Henry remarks, in his Estimate of the Philosophical Character of Dr. Priestley, “with which he was to work were, for the most part, to be invented; and of the merits of those which he did invent, it is a sufficient proof that they continue in use to this day, with no very important modification. All his contrivances for collecting, transferring, and preserving different kinds of air, and for submitting those airs to the action of solid and liquid substances, were exceedingly simple, beautiful, and effectual. They were chiefly, too, the work of his own hands, or were constructed under his directions by unskilled persons.” Dr. Priestley’s first publication on pneumatic chemistry appeared in 1772; it was called “Directions for impregnating Water with fixed Air,” &c. &c. In this work he proposed the use of a condensing engine for the purpose of causing the water to dissolve a larger quantity of the gas, and thus to prepare artificial mineral waters: this plan, it is well known, is now practised to a great extent. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1772, he announced the discovery that air, which had been vitiated by respiration or the burning of candles, was restored by the vegetation of plants; that air exposed to a mixture of sulphur and iron filings, as had previously been done by Hales, was diminished by about one-fourth or one-fifth in bulk, and that the residual air was lighter than atmospheric air, and noxious to animals. This diminished air he afterwards called phlogisticated air; it is now named azotic, or nitrogen gas. The discovery of this fluid is generally attributed to Dr. Rutherford, who, in his treatise “De Aëre Mephitico,” also published in 1772, mentioned a few of its properties without giving it any name. As Dr. Priestley’s papers were read before the Royal Society so early as in March, it is not improbable that he was the first discoverer of the gas in question. In 1774 appeared the first of three volumes, entitled “Experiments and Observations on different kinds of Air;” and these were followed by three more, entitled “Experiments and Observations relating to various Branches of Natural Philosophy, with a continuation of the Observations on Air:” the last of these was published in 1786. This work contains a series of experiments, unrivalled for their number, novelty, and importance.

Dr. Priestley’s greatest discovery, that of oxygen gas, which he called dephlogisticated air, was made on the 1st of August, 1774, and announced in the Philosophical Transactions for 1775. This gas he first procured from red oxide of mercury, and afterwards from red oxide of lead, and several other substances.

In 1776 Dr. Priestley’s Observations on Respiration were read before the Royal Society. In these he showed that atmospheric air, during inspiration, was diminished in quantity, and deteriorated in quality, by the action of the blood upon it through the blood-vessels of the lungs. He also proved that gases have the power of acting through bladders, and one of his latest papers was on this curious subject: it appeared in the fifth volume of the American Philosophical Transactions, and seems to have been completely overlooked by later experimenters on the same subject. Another of his early and important observations related to the permanent mixture of gases of different densities, in cases in which they do not combine; and he cited this circumstance to account for the perfect mixture of the two gases which form the atmosphere, and which are well known to be of different densities.

In addition to oxygen gas, already mentioned, Dr. Priestley also discovered muriatic acid gas, sulphurous acid gas, fluoric acid gas, nitrous oxide gas, ammoniacal gas, and carbonic oxide gas; but he entirely mistook the nature of the last-mentioned body. He also showed that muriatic acid gas and ammoniacal gas, when mixed, condense into solid sal ammoniac. He must also have obtained chlorine gas, but it escaped his notice, because, being received over mercury, it quickly combined with it. Hydrogen gas and carbonic acid gas were known before his time; but his experiments upon them greatly extended our acquaintance with their properties. Nitrous gas, barely discovered by Dr. Hales, was first investigated by Priestley, and applied by him to eudiometry, a most important branch of chemical science originating with himself.

In 1778, he pursued his experiments on the property of vegetables growing in the light, to renovate impure air, and on the use of vegetation in this part of the economy of nature. Chemistry is also indebted to him for the method of decomposing metallic oxides by means of hydrogen gas, and for noticing that this gas has the property of dissolving iron. He observed also that lime is less soluble in hot than cold water; and that when a solution of lime in cold water is heated, part of the lime is deposited.

In the first volume of his work on air (p. 278), Dr. Priestley has anticipated the idea of Dr. Arnott and Sir J. F. W. Herschel, that electricity, acting on the brain and nerves, may excite muscular action.

Dr. Henry, in the memoir already quoted, has remarked, that facts are to be met with in various parts of Dr. Priestley’s works that might have given him a hint of the law, since unfolded by the sagacity of M. Gay-Lussac, “that gaseous substances combine in definite volumes.” From the same memoir we extract the following observations, in conclusion of this short account of Dr. Priestley’s scientific labours:—“He greatly enlarged our knowledge of the important class of metals, and traced out many of their most interesting relations to oxygen and to acids. He unfolded, and illustrated by simple and beautiful experiments, distinct views of combustion; of the respiration of animals, both of the inferior and higher classes; of the changes produced in organized bodies by putrefaction, and of the causes that accelerate or retard that process; of the importance of azote as the characteristic ingredient of animal substances, observable by the action of dilute nitric acid on muscle and tendon; of the functions and economy of living vegetables; and of the relations and subserviency which exist between the animal and vegetable kingdoms.”

Engraved by Rob^t. Hart.
ARIOSTO.
From a Print by Raffaelle Morghen.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

ARIOSTO.

Ludovico Ariosto was born at Reggio, near Modena, in September, 1474. From boyhood he showed a turn for versifying, and a distaste for the severer study of the law, to which he was destined. This repugnance triumphed over the wishes of his father, an Officer in the Duke of Ferrara’s service, and obtained license for him to pursue his own inclinations. His father died about the year 1500, leaving a small inheritance, and ten children, of whom Ludovico was the eldest. Thus, the care of the family, and the education and establishment of its younger branches, devolved upon him; and this onerous and important duty he faithfully performed, while to his mother, who survived his other parent many years, he ever manifested a filial affection.

In the midst of his domestic cares he still found time to cultivate literature, and he composed several lyric pieces; among others, a Latin epithalamium on the marriage of Alfonso d’Este, son of the reigning Duke of Ferrara, with the infamous Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI. Ariosto was then but a young man, and probably little acquainted with the political and domestic history of the Borgias; the praises therefore which he bestows on Lucrezia, not merely for her beauty, but for her moral qualities, ought not to be too severely criticised; the same excuse, however, cannot be made for a repetition of the same eulogium in his subsequent great poem, when he must certainly have become acquainted with the contemporary chronicles. But all poets were in that age tainted with court flattery, and Ariosto’s object was to gain the favour of his sovereigns and patrons, the princes of Este. Princely patronage was then absolutely necessary to a literary man who was not himself rich, as there was no reading public upon which to depend. Italy was divided into principalities, and distracted by foreign war and intestine dissensions, and the notice of the courts could alone bestow fame upon an author, and save him from neglect and distress.

These compositions attracted the favourable notice of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, Alfonso’s younger brother, a man of information and abilities. Upon personal acquaintance, he was pleased with Ariosto’s manners, and received him as one of the gentlemen of his retinue about the year 1503. Ippolito was a busy politician, and deeply concerned in all the intrigues of that most busy period of Italian politics. He soon perceived that Ariosto’s talents might be turned to account, and employed him in various missions, to Florence, Urbino, and other Italian courts; in the course of which the poet became acquainted with many persons of rank and consequence, and especially with Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, afterwards Leo X., who took a particular liking to him, and admitted him to his familiar society.

Ariosto was recommended by his first patron, Cardinal Ippolito, to Alfonso d’Este, who succeeded to the ducal crown of Ferrara in 1505; and from that time he enjoyed the confidence of both the brothers.

In 1509, Alfonso joined in the league of Cambray with the Pope, the French, and the Emperor Maximilian, against the Venetians; and Ippolito, who was a soldier as well as a statesman, took the command of his brother’s troops. Ariosto accompanied his master to the field, and was present at the campaign of that year on the banks of the Po. He has described, in the thirty-sixth canto of his Furioso, the atrocities perpetrated by the Sclavonian mercenaries in the Venetian service.

It is not our province to follow the operations of this war, farther than to state, that Ariosto was present in several battles, and employed in two political missions to Pope Julius II. The second time, he was compelled to make a hasty retreat from Rome, as Julius had publicly threatened to have him thrown into the Tiber. In 1513, Leo X. succeeded to the Papal throne. Ariosto soon after repaired to Rome to congratulate the new Pope. Leo received him as an old and intimate acquaintance. “He stooped graciously from his holy chair towards me, took me by the hand, and saluted me on both the cheeks. From that moment my credulous hopes were raised to the unknown regions of heaven.” In short, Ariosto now thought his fortune was made. But he had not sufficient patience; he soon grew tired of waiting at Rome without receiving any more substantial proofs of Leo’s benevolence, and, too independent to be importunate at levees and audiences, he turned his back upon all his prospects from that quarter. Having returned to Ferrara, he applied himself with renewed earnestness to his favourite studies. He had long since formed the plan of a great poem on the subject of the wars of Charlemagne against the Saracens, a traditional theme derived from the fabulous chronicle of Turpin, in which some truth was intermixed with a mass of exaggerations, anachronisms, and wondrous tales of paladins, knights-errant, and giants, the offspring of older traditions of Welch or Armorican invention. (See Warton’s “History of English Poetry,” Ellis’s “Specimens of early English Metrical Romances,” etc.) Many French, Spanish, and Italian ballad and romance writers had treated this fanciful theme, each adding something to the common stock of the marvellous from his own imagination. In Italy, three poets of considerable genius, Pulci, Boiardo, and Bello, had composed long poems on the subject, in which the celebrated Orlando or Roland, figured as the great champion of Christendom. Boiardo, departing from his predecessors, gave a new interest to his poem by making Orlando fall in love with Angelica, a Pagan or Saracen (the two are often taken as synonymous in all these romances) princess, of supernatural beauty, and possessed of magical powers, who had come from the farthest Asia to Charlemagne’s camp for the express purpose of exciting the jealousy of the Christian leaders, and thus, by spreading dissension among them, rendering them unable to cope successfully with the infidels. Boiardo did not complete his poem, which he called “Orlando Innamorato;” and he left off the story of Angelica, where Charlemagne, weary of the discord which raged in his camp since Angelica’s appearance, gives her in charge to Namo, one of his squires, until such time as he shall have decided upon the rival claims of Rinaldo and Orlando, his two bravest paladins, to her hand. It is from this point that Ariosto took up the thread of his story, and in consonance with the proverb that from love to madness there is but one step, he determined to make Orlando run mad with jealousy, on discovering that Angelica had eloped with a young and handsome, but obscure squire, of the name of Medoro, for whom she forgets all the objects of her journey to the west, and despises the sighs of Orlando and the other renowned paladins of Charlemagne’s court. Ariosto styled his poem “Orlando Furioso,” and he wrote it at first in forty cantos, which he afterwards increased to forty-six. Orlando’s madness runs through the greater part of the poem, until he is restored to reason by his cousin Astolpho, who brings back his wits in a phial from the moon. Meantime the principal action of the poem, namely, the war between Charlemagne and the Saracens, continues throughout, and ends with the final expulsion of the Moors from France, and the death of their great champion Rodomonte, whose death, like that of Turnus in the Æneid, closes the poem. But it would be idle to look for the unity and the consecutiveness of epic action, as some critics have done, in a poem which is not an epic. There are many actions in the Furioso, all skilfully interwoven together, and making in the end an harmonious whole; but during their progress, the reader finds himself often lost as in a labyrinth, and perplexed how to recover the thread of his recollections. And yet the beauties of description, the fine touches of character and feeling, are so many, that we wander on delighted, as pilgrims who have strayed into an enchanted world, and then gaze, and wonder, and idle along, thoughtless of the end or purport of their journey.

Ariosto was employed for ten years about his poem, from his first beginning to the completion of it in forty cantos. It was printed at his own expense, at Ferrara, in April, 1516, by Mazocco del Bondeno, in one volume quarto. He sold one hundred copies of this first edition to the bookseller, Gigli, for twenty-eight scudi, being at the rate of about fifteen pence a copy, on condition that the bookseller should not sell the copies for more than twenty pence each. This edition is now extremely rare.

Ariosto hastened to present a copy to Cardinal Ippolito, to whom there is an affectionate dedication in the third stanza of the first canto, besides several other passages throughout the work which are highly laudatory of him, of his brother Alfonso, and of the house of Este in general. The Cardinal, after perusing the poem, seems to have been puzzled about the meaning and purpose of it, and he is said to have asked the author “Where in the devil’s name he had picked up so many absurdities?” But whether this story be true or not, it is certain that Ippolito did not relish the work, and that Ariosto gained by it no additional favour with him. Cardinal Ippolito was a busy worldly man; his mind was anything but poetical, his tastes and pursuits were matter of fact; his abilities—and he had abilities—were in a different line, and he told Ariosto that “he would have been better pleased, if, instead of praising him in idle verse, he had exerted himself more earnestly in his service.” This remark we have from Ariosto himself, in his second satire. Much declamation has been wasted on the Cardinal for his want of taste, and for what has been called his ungenerous conduct towards the great poet. But a want of taste for poetry is no ground for moral censure; and if the Cardinal thought no better of Ariosto for exerting a talent which he could not appreciate, at least it does not appear that he esteemed him the less. He retained him in his service as before, until the end of 1517, when being on the point of setting off for his diocese of Gran in Hungary, of which he was Archbishop, he requested Ariosto to follow him; but Ariosto excused himself on the plea of his delicate health and the rudeness of the Hungarian climate. His brother Alessandro, however, accompanied the Cardinal. Ippolito was certainly displeased at Ariosto’s refusal, but he did not stop his pension in consequence of it. It was not until a year or two after that the small pension of twenty-five scudi every four months, of which Ariosto speaks, was stopped, during the Cardinal’s absence; and it is stated by Barotti, in his life of Ariosto, that this took place in consequence of the Duke’s abolishing a local tax, on the produce of which Ariosto’s pension was assigned. Besides this pension, Ariosto enjoyed one-third of the fees paid to the Notarial Chancery for every deed registered, which brought him about one hundred scudi per annum. This he did not lose after the Cardinal’s departure. He seems to have enjoyed some other perquisites, which were, of course, the fruits of his connection with the princes of Este. He was not rich, but, at the same time, he was not in distress. Although he sometimes indulges in outbreakings of poetical querulousness in his satires, which are the best authority for his biography, yet, in the very midst of these, we find expressions of sincere regard and grateful affection for both the Cardinal and the Duke, for Ariosto was a right-hearted man.

After the Cardinal’s death, which happened in 1520, Ariosto was taken by Duke Alfonso into his own service, as one of his gentlemen attendants. The duties of this office, we are told by the poet himself, were merely nominal, and left him ample leisure to pursue his favourite studies. Yet the Duke was very fond of his company, and willingly granted those favours which he requested for himself or his friends. (See Ariosto’s Seventh Satire.) From the general character of Ariosto, however, we may conclude that he was not an indiscreet or importunate petitioner. In 1521, he published a second edition of his great poem, with many corrections, but still in forty cantos only: this edition is as scarce as the first. As he expressed a wish to be more actively employed, Alfonso, in 1522, appointed him Governor of the province of Garfagnana, bordering on the Modenese territory, and situated on the western slope of the Apennines, on the side of Lucca. This country had just been restored to the house of Este, after having been for years occupied by the Florentines and the Pope. The people were divided into factions, which openly defied the law. Ariosto humorously describes in his fifth satire the difficulties of his new office. He remained about three years at Castelnuovo, the chief town of this mountain district, and seems to have succeeded by his firm, yet liberal and conciliatory conduct, in restoring order among that turbulent and rude population, who showed him marked proofs of esteem on several occasions. In 1523, the Duke’s secretary, Pistofilo, wrote to offer him the appointment of ambassador to the new Pope, Clement VII.; but Ariosto declined the honour, saying, that he had already had enough of Rome and the Medici, alluding to his disappointment which he had experienced from Leo X. In 1524, he returned from his government to Ferrara, which he does not seem to have ever quitted afterwards. He had there long before formed an attachment to a lady, whose name he has carefully concealed; and this appears, from his own hints, to have been an additional reason, on several occasions above mentioned, for his not wishing to remove far from Ferrara. By this lady he had a son, Virginio, whom he legitimated by a regular act done before Cardinal Campeggio, in April, 1530. Virginio was then twenty-one years of age. The deed still exists in the archives of the house of Ariosti. In it the Christian name alone of Virginio’s mother, Orsolina, is mentioned, and she is qualified as a spinster; but her family name and rank are left out, honestatis causâ, as it is there stated. This Virginio took orders, and became afterwards a canon of the Cathedral of Ferrara. Ariosto had another natural son, Giovanbattista, who rose to the rank of captain in the Duke’s service.

After his return from Garfagnana, Ariosto recast some comedies which he had composed in youth, and wrote others, making in all five comedies in blank verse, which pleased the Duke so much upon perusal that he resolved on having them performed, and for this purpose had a theatre constructed in a wing of the ducal palace. No pains or expense were spared to add to the splendour of the representation, which the Duke and his court attended. These plays are modelled upon Plautus and Terence; the unities are preserved, and the plot is made to turn upon the shifts and stratagems of dissipated and needy young men, aided by base domestics or panders, to deceive their parents, or the parents or guardians of their mistresses. And, like the contemporary comedies of Bibbiena and Machiavelli (co-founders with Ariosto of Italian comedy,) they are stained by frequent indecency of allusion and language.

In the division of his father’s scanty property, Ludovico had for his share the house at Ferrara, which stands, or stood till lately, in the street of Santa Maria di Bocche, and on the door of which was seen the marble escutcheon of the Ariosti. He purchased, in 1526, a small house of a person of the name of Pistoja, near the street Mirasole. He afterwards bought several adjoining lots of ground, and built himself a commodious house, which he surrounded by a garden and trees. This is still seen in the street Mirasole, with an inscription to commemorate its former inmate. There he spent, in studious and pleasant retirement, the latter years of his life, continuing to enjoy the favour of Duke Alfonso, and of his son Prince Ercole d’Este, afterwards Duke Hercules II., to whom he gave instruction in literature.

In October, 1532, Ariosto, after sixteen years passed, since its first publication, in the continual and almost daily revision of his great poem, published a third edition in forty-six cantos, which, notwithstanding some misprints, has remained the legitimate text of the Orlando Furioso. This was the last edition which he published himself. The six additional cantos are the 33d, 37th, 39th, 42d, 44th, and 45th; and in the others, stanzas are added or altered from time to time. Soon after Ariosto had thus completed his work, he fell ill of a painful internal complaint, which, after several months of lingering sufferings, terminated in death, June 6, 1533. He was then in his fifty-ninth year. He was buried privately in the church of San Benedetto, near his house, and his funeral was attended by the monks, who volunteered to pay this honour to his remains. Forty years later, the church having been rebuilt, a monument was raised to him on the right of the great altar by Agostino Mosti of Ferrara, who in his youth had studied under Ariosto, to which the poet’s bones were transferred with great ceremony. In 1612, Ludovico Ariosto, the poet’s grand-nephew, raised another monument, more splendid than the first, and placed it in the chapel to the left of the great altar; and thither Ariosto’s remains underwent removal for the second time. They were then left in peace for nearly two centuries, until the French took possession of the country at the beginning of the present century, when they removed the monument (we believe the last of the two, though we cannot positively say) to the Lyceum or University; where Ariosto’s chair and his ink-stand are also preserved, as well as the autographs of the Furioso. In the convent of San Benedetto is a painting, representing paradise, by Garofalo, who had known Ariosto personally, in which the poet is seen between St. Catherine and St. Sebastian.

Virginio Ariosto left several curious memoranda of his father’s habits, which are given by Barotti. He was tall, of a robust and naturally healthy frame, and a good pedestrian. One summer’s morning he strayed out of Carpi, near Reggio, where he then resided, in his morning gown and slippers, to take a walk. Being absent in thought, he had gone more than half way to Ferrara before he recollected himself; and then continued his route, and arrived at Ferrara in the evening, having walked a distance of at least forty miles. He was generally frugal, and not choice in his meals, though at times he ate much and hurriedly, because, his son says, he was not then thinking of what he was doing, being busy in his mind about his verses or about his plans for building. One day a visiter appeared just after he had dined. While they were conversing, the servant brought up dinner for the stranger; and, as the latter was engaged in talking, Ariosto fell on the viands laid on the table, and ate all himself, the guest of course not presuming to interrupt him. After the visiter was gone, Ariosto’s brother remonstrated with him on his inhospitable behaviour, when the poet, coming to himself, exclaimed, “Well, it is his fault, after all; why did he not begin to eat his dinner at once?”

The Italians have bestowed on Ariosto the epithet of “the Divine,” and they also call him “the Homer of Ferrara.”

The character of Ariosto may be easily gathered from this brief sketch of his life. He was trustworthy, loyal, and sincere, free from envy or jealousy, and a warm friend; he was fond of meditation and retirement, often absent and absorbed in thought, and yet he could be very pleasant and jovial in company. He was not a great reader, and he selected the Latin classics in preference to other authors. He studied men and nature more than books. Of Greek he acquired some knowledge late in life. He was very fond of architecture, and regretted that his means did not permit him to satisfy his passion for building. He also took pleasure in gardening, but he was too absent and impatient to prosper in that occupation. His character, by his own confession, was stained by licentious amours: and his works are tainted by impure passages, which render them unfit for indiscriminate perusal. Still this is the fault of detached passages, not of the general spirit or object of his compositions; and if judged in comparison with his contemporaries, he will not be severely censured as an immoral writer.

Ariosto’s great poem, the Orlando Furioso, is too generally known to require a long discussion of its merits. It is by universal consent the first of all poems of chivalry and romance. It is a wonderful creation of man’s imaginative powers, extending far beyond the limits of the natural world. But the poet in his wildest flights takes care not to fall into too palpable extravagance or absurdity. He has the art of endowing the creatures of his fancy with features and attributes apparently so appropriate to their supposed nature, as to remove from his readers the feeling of the improbability of their existence. There are also other merits in the poem besides those of imagination and description. There is often a vein of moral allusion half concealed within Ariosto’s fanciful strains, the evidence of a mind deeply acquainted with the mysteries of the human heart, fully alive to the beauty of virtue, and imbued with sound notions of moral philosophy. At other times he tries to cast off his pensive mood and to appear careless and satirical, and he succeeds in exciting laughter at men’s follies and even vices; a laughter which we doubt whether the writer felt in his own heart. In his satire, however, although rather broad and licentious, he was not bitter or misanthropical. His is the humour of a good-tempered poco curante, who has no intention to break with mankind on account of its faults, and who wishes to make the best of the present world, such as it is. His touches of the pathetic, though not many, are exquisite of their kind: we will only mention, as instances, the story of Ginevra, that of Zerbino and Isabella, and the death of Brandimarte. His acquaintance with history, geography, and other sciences, was respectable, considering the time he lived in. His language is generally natural and flowing, and the justness and clearness of his expressions render the perusal of his poem of great use even to prose writers. Galileo used to say that he had formed his style chiefly by assiduous study of the Furioso. Ariosto has been accused of using trivial expressions, borrowed from popular use rather than from books. Many of these, however, have been since adopted by the best Italian writers. Several of his lines certainly are harsh and inharmonious, but it is not improbable that this was intentional, for the sake of expression, or to give variety to the sound of his verse, as it is well known that Ariosto was not a negligent writer; he corrected and recorrected his poem with the greatest care, and his apparent facility is the result of much study and labour. It is said that he altered not less than twenty times the 142d stanza of the eighteenth canto, in which he describes the beginning of a storm at sea, before he fixed on the text as it how stands.

After the three editions of the Furioso superintended by Ariosto himself, numerous editions appeared in various parts of Italy during the sixteenth century, all however more or less incorrect, and some of them—for instance, the one of 1556, by Ruscelli—deliberately mutilated or interpolated, either by editorial presumption, or through scruples of morality. The Aldine edition of 1545 is one of the best of that age; it is also the first that contains five additional cantos, which are the beginning of a new chivalric poem, left in MS. by the author, and given by his son Virginio to Antonio Manuzio. The edition of 1584, by Franceschi of Venice, is rich in comments and illustrations, but the text is often incorrect. The editions of the seventeenth century are all likewise imperfect. The edition of Orlandini, 2 vols. folio, Venice, 1731, contains all the works of Ariosto, with three biographies by Pigna, Fornari, and Garofalo, and several comments and illustrations. The learned Barotti of Ferrara brought out an edition of all Ariosto’s works, Venice, 6 vols. 12mo., 1766, in which he restored in many places the original reading, and added a life of Ariosto, which is still considered the best extant. The Birmingham edition of the Furioso, 4 vols. 4to., with plates, some of which are by Bartolozzi, is remarkably handsome, and one of the most correct. But the best text of the Furioso is that of the edition of Pirotta, Milan, 1818, in 4to., in which the editor, Morali, has succeeded in faithfully restoring the original text of Ariosto’s last edition of 1532, which has been since adopted by Molini in his edition, Florence, 2 vols. 12mo., 1823, by the Padua edition of 1827 in 4to., and by other later Italian editors. Ciardetti has published all the works of Ariosto, Florence, 8 vols. large 8vo., 1823–4.

The Orlando Furioso has been translated into most European languages. Of the English translations, Harrington’s is spirited, but far from faithful; it is in reality rather an imitation than a translation. That by T. H. Croker, 1755, has the merit of being faithful and literal, stanza for stanza. The recent translation by Mr. S. Rose is considered the best.

The Satires of Ariosto are seven in number; they are addressed to his brothers and other friends. As the author did not intend them for publication in his lifetime, he expressed himself freely in them, and related many curious particulars of his history. They were first published in 1534, and have been often reprinted, both separately and with the rest of his works. They have been twice translated into English, by Robert Toft in 1608, and by Croker in 1759. Ariosto is one of the best Italian satirists. He has followed the Horatian model; he corrects without too much bitterness or scurrility. He reprobates the vices of his age and country, and they were many and great. He speaks of popes, princes, and cardinals, of the learned and the unlearned, of clergymen and laymen, of nobles and plebeians, with great freedom, but without violence or exaggeration, and in language generally, though not always, decorous. Ariosto’s satires deserve to be more generally read than they are, both as a mirror of the times, and as a model of that species of composition which, from the pens of ill-tempered or vulgar men, has too often assumed a tone of malignancy and licentiousness equally remote from justice and truth.

Besides the Orlando Furioso, his comedies, and his satires, Ariosto left some minor works, in Italian and in Latin verse, such as epigrams, canzoni, sonnets, capitoli in terza rima, and other lyrics; and a curious Latin eclogue, which long remained inedited, composed in 1506, on the occasion of a conspiracy against the life of Duke Alfonso by his two brothers, Ferrante and Giulio. He also wrote a dialogue in Italian prose, called “l’Erboleto,” on medicine and philosophy. We have no other works of his in prose, except one or two letters; his correspondence, which probably was extensive, has never been collected.

The number of commentators, critics, and biographers of Ariosto is very great: a complete collection of them would form a considerable library. Some of the best have been mentioned in this sketch. We must add Baruffaldi, junior, who wrote a life of Ariosto, Ferrara, 1807, and Count Mazzuchelli, who has given a good biography of him in his “Scrittori d’Italia.”

[House of Ariosto at Ferrara.]

MARLBOROUGH.

John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, was born at Ashe in Devonshire, the seat of his maternal grandfather, Sir John Drake, June 24, 1650. His father, Sir Winston Churchill, was a man of some literary repute, a zealous royalist, and in good esteem at the court of Charles II., to which John Churchill was introduced at the early age of twelve. He soon became one of the Duke of York’s pages; gained that prince’s favour, and was presented with a commission in the guards. In 1672, he held the rank of Captain in the English troops which served as auxiliaries to France under the Duke of Monmouth; and he was so fortunate as to gain the good opinion of Turenne, and to be honoured with the public thanks of Louis XIV. for his gallant conduct at the siege of Maestricht. On his return to England, he was again attached to the Duke of York’s household. He married Miss Sarah Jennings in 1681; and was created a peer of Scotland in 1682, and a peer of England soon after the Duke’s accession to the throne, by the title of Baron Churchill of Sandridge in Hertfordshire. In this early part of his life he prudently abstained from active interference in politics. Gratitude and present interest combined to render him averse to thwart the wishes or policy of his master: political foresight and attachment to the established church warned him not to co-operate in the King’s imprudent measures. He does not appear to have been embarrassed by an over-generous and enthusiastic temper; and therefore, whether or no he was of those who invited William of Orange to England, he had the less difficulty, on the landing of that prince, in making up his mind to the painful task of abandoning a kind master and a falling cause. But, in doing so, he was guilty of no treachery. Entrusted with the command of 6000 men, he carried over no troops, and betrayed no post; but quietly withdrew with a few fellow-officers from King James’s camp.

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.
MARLBOROUGH.
From the Picture by G. Kneller
in the Collection of the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

Soon after the Revolution, Lord Churchill was sworn into the Privy Council, and created Earl of Marlborough. He commanded the British contingent in the Netherlands in 1689, and had a large share in gaining the battle fought at Walcourt, August 25. In the two following years he served in Ireland and on the Continent, with the high approbation of King William. But his prosperity was suddenly checked by an abrupt dismissal from all his offices. This was soon followed by his committal to the Tower for high treason; but the falsity of this charge, the profligate contrivance of an obscure criminal, was soon shown. The cause of his dismissal from office is not clearly ascertained: it has been assigned to his advocacy of the interests of the Princess Anne; to his remonstrances against the undue favour shown by William towards his Dutch followers; to the detection of a clandestine correspondence with James II. It is at least certain that such a correspondence existed, and that it is a deep stain upon the honesty of Marlborough’s character; whether we suppose him to have been earnest in the wish to bring back the Stuarts, or merely to have sought an opportunity for grace, if the political changes of that eventful period had restored the exiled family to the throne.

Marlborough continued in disgrace until after the death of Queen Mary, which produced a reconciliation between the King and the Princess. In 1698, he was recalled to the Privy Council, and appointed Governor to the presumptive heir to the crown, the young Duke of Gloucester. From that time to the King’s death, he continued, ostensibly at least, in favour, though not employed in any military capacity; and one of the King’s last acts was to recommend him to Anne, as the fittest person to command her armies. This was not necessary to secure her favour. The Countess of Marlborough had long been endeared to her by the ties of a much closer and more familiar friendship than usually exists between a sovereign and a subject; and the Earl had stood in opposition to the court in support of her interests, and had been disgraced, as many believed, on that account. Accordingly, one of the Queen’s first acts was to confer on him the order of the Garter, and to nominate him Captain-general of the forces, at home and abroad. He was mainly instrumental in inducing the new government to confirm the alliances made by the late King for prosecuting the war of the Spanish succession; was sent ambassador to Holland, and finally invested with the command of the allied army. We can only give a summary of the operations of each campaign in that war, in which Europe was delivered from the fear of France. The first, in 1702, was eminently successful, though the general was much hampered by the interference of the Dutch deputies who attended the army. The strong fortresses which line the Meuse, from Venloo to Liege, were wrested from France. The Queen expressed her gratitude for this auspicious beginning by conferring on Marlborough a dukedom, and a pension of 5000l.: the two houses of Parliament voted their thanks. The following year was distinguished by no decisive events, chiefly owing to the difficulty of getting the Dutch to act with cordiality or concert: the conquests of the preceding campaign, however, were confirmed and extended. The memorable campaign of 1704 was remarkable for the boldness, political as well as military, of its conception, and the secrecy of its execution. The successes of the French in Germany having reduced the Emperor almost to despair, it became Marlborough’s first object to prevent the total ruin of that monarch, and the consequent dissolution of the confederacy. To this end, without communicating his real views either to the States or to the English ministry, he obtained their sanction for opening the next year’s operations on the Moselle; and passing that river, led his troops on to the Danube, and effected a junction with the imperial generals, the Margrave of Baden and Prince Eugene, almost before his real design was known at home, or even to the enemy. The first fruit of this was the battle of Schellenberg, near Donawerth, on the Danube, where the Elector of Bavaria’s lines were forced, and his army beaten. The French, under Marshal Tallard, advanced to the support of their ally; and, with the Bavarians, took up a strong position near Hochstet, their right flank resting on the village of Blenheim, and being covered by the Danube. The British and allied troops, commanded by Marlborough and Eugene, amounted to about 52,000 men; the enemy were rather more numerous, and very strongly posted. To engage was dangerous; but the circumstances of the campaign rendered it necessary; and, against the advice of several officers and the expectation of the French, the attack was made on the morning of August 7. After a bloody battle, the French position was carried, and their army utterly disorganized or destroyed. By this victory the whole Electorate of Bavaria fell into the hands of the Imperialists; and the French were driven to repass the Rhine. The allies followed them, and besieged and took the strong fortress of Landau, while the Duke, by hasty marches, led a detachment to the Moselle, and secured the city of Treves and the fortified town of Traerbach. To this expedition he attached great importance. “I reckon,” he said, “the campaign well over, since the winter quarters are settled on the Moselle, which I think will give France as much uneasiness as anything that has been done this summer.” In this single campaign, the Emperor was relieved from the fear of being besieged in his capital; Germany freed from the pressure of war; and the troops established in those quarters which afforded the best prospect of opening the next campaign to advantage. And, above all, the charm of a long series of victories, the fancied invincibility of the French, was effectually destroyed.

Every mark of gratitude which a nation can pay was bestowed on the Duke of Marlborough. To perpetuate the memory of his services, the royal manor of Woodstock was granted to him and to his heirs; and, in addition to this, in testimony of her own affection and respect, the Queen gave orders for erecting, at her own expense, the splendid pile of Blenheim.

The advantages which Marlborough hoped to derive from his position on the Moselle were entirely lost, through the inactivity of the German confederates. As if aware that this would be the case, the French concentrated their exertions to recover their losses in the Netherlands; and they succeeded so far, that the Dutch sent pressing messages to Marlborough to return to their help. He did so, and soon restored the superiority of the allies in that quarter. But his success was attended with mortification, for the German general left to act on the defensive on the Moselle abandoned his trust, and retired, having burnt the magazines collected on that river; and thus effectually frustrated that scheme of invasion from the Moselle, to which Marlborough had attached so much importance. To guard against invasion from the Netherlands, the French had drawn strong lines across the country, from the Scheldt to the Meuse, from Antwerp to Namur, behind which Marshal Villeroi took post on Marlborough’s junction with the Dutch army. These lines, which had been three years in forming, at a vast expense, were attacked and penetrated almost without resistance or loss. This success, if properly followed up, would have thrown all Brabant into Marlborough’s hands; he was continually embarrassed by the jealousy or supineness of the Dutch generals. Once, at the passage of the Dyle, and again nearly on the field of Waterloo, he was prevented from engaging, when he considered himself certain of victory. By these disappointments, the Duke was severely mortified. Whether from fear that the States, if affronted, would readily conclude a separate peace, or from whatever cause, the misbehaviour of the Dutch officers and deputies was endured by the English Government and General with singular patience. On this occasion, Marlborough’s remonstrances, public and private, though very guarded, procured the removal of those whose conduct had been most offensive. In the course of this autumn the Emperor Joseph created Marlborough a prince of the empire, and conferred on him the principality of Mindelheim.

Disgusted by the vexatious contradiction to which he had been exposed in the past year, Marlborough earnestly desired to march an army into Italy, and to co-operate with Prince Eugene in driving the French beyond the Alps; and he was empowered by the British cabinet to take this step. But he was unable to procure troops for the purpose either from the Dutch or from the German princes; and he relinquished his intention the more willingly on account of some unexpected successes of the French on the Rhine. Marlborough opened the campaign of 1706 with a demonstration against Namur. Marshal Villeroi received positive orders to risk a battle for the safety of the place, and was anxious to fight before a reinforcement of Danish and Hanoverian troops could join the allies. The two armies met, in nearly equal numbers, near the village of Ramillies, May 23; and the French army received a signal overthrow, which led to the immediate submission of all Brabant. Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, and the other chief towns of the province, opened their gates, and with expressions of joy acknowledged Charles of Austria as their legitimate sovereign, and the rightful heir to the Spanish crown. The siege of Ostend was the next military operation; and that important place, celebrated for its desperate resistance to the Spaniards in the preceding century, yielded in a few days. The strong towns of Menin, Dendermond, and Ath also submitted before the end of the campaign.

The following year was fruitful in intrigues at home, and remarkable for the decline of the Duchess of Marlborough’s favour with Queen Anne: the military operations were barren of incident or of interest. The campaign of 1708 opened with a reverse of fortune. Disgusted by the overbearing conduct of the Dutch, some of the most important places which had surrendered to the allies in the preceding year entered into negotiations to recall the French. Antwerp and Brussels were saved by a timely discovery of the plot. Ghent and Bruges passed over to the enemy, who prosecuted their success by forming the siege of Oudenard; but the rapid march of Marlborough compelled them to abandon this design, and brought on another battle, July 11, in which victory again rested with the allies. The next operation was to undertake the siege of Lille, one of the strongest fortresses of France, where the attempt was considered so impracticable, that it became the subject of general ridicule. It proved successful, however, in spite of the presence of a superior army, commanded by the Dukes of Vendôme and Berwick. The prosecution of the attack was committed to Prince Eugene, while Marlborough remained at the head of the covering army, which he manœuvred so ably, that the enemy never found opportunity to venture a battle for the relief of Lille. Marshal Boufflers, the governor, surrendered the town October 23, after a gallant resistance of two months, and retired into the citadel, which he maintained till December 9. Even at that late period of the season Ghent was besieged, and soon submitted. Bruges followed its example. “Thus terminated this extraordinary campaign, perhaps one of the most scientific occurring in the annals of military history. From the commencement to the close, the confederates had to struggle against a force far superior in numbers; to attack an army posted in a position considered as impregnable; to besiege a place of the first magnitude at the very moment when they were themselves in a manner invested; to open and maintain their communications in spite of innumerable obstacles, both of nature and art; and, finally, to reduce, in the depth of winter, two fortresses, defended by garrisons which in other circumstances would have been considered as forming an army of no common magnitude.”[^[4]]

[4]. Coxe. Life of Marlborough.

Discouraged by these reverses, Louis commenced a negotiation for peace; but the terms demanded by the allies were too hard, and with the return of spring both parties took the field with larger forces than had yet been brought together. Tournay, a place of formidable strength, but half garrisoned and half provided, soon yielded to the arms of the allies. The siege of Mons was next formed. No effort had been spared by the French to concentrate their forces against their most formidable enemy; and they took the field with an army not inferior to that of the allies. Villars, the most enterprising and successful of the French marshals, commanded in chief, and the gallant veteran, Marshal Boufflers, volunteered to serve under Villars, though his junior. A crowd of generals of minor note, yet well known in the wars of the age, filled the subordinate commands; and the household troops, the Swiss and Irish brigades, with others, the flower of the French army, were collected in the camp. Not less imposing was the army on the other side, commanded by Marlborough and Eugene, assisted by a train of princes and generals. Numerically, the two armies seem to have been about equal; and both were supported by formidable parks of artillery. The spirit of the French soldiers was high, and Villars undertook to save Mons, at the hazard of a general engagement, which took place September 11, near the village of Malplaquet, a few miles south of the besieged town. Villars had spared no trouble to fortify a post naturally strong; and it was defended with desperate valour. The attack was commenced by the Dutch on the right of the enemy’s line, and by Prince Eugene on the left. Little progress was made on these points, during an obstinate conflict of four hours; but the centre of the French line was weakened by the demands for reinforcements to the wings, and the crisis of the battle at length arrived in a successful attack made upon the centre. Boufflers made a desperate attempt with his cavalry, whom he led repeatedly to the charge, to retrieve the fortune of the day, but the progress of the allies was irresistible. He saw his right wing dislodged, his centre broken, and at length was compelled to order a retreat, which he conducted in a masterly manner, and without loss. All the generals signalised their courage in the hottest of the strife. Villars was severely wounded, and carried fainting off the field, so that the command devolved on Boufflers. Eugene was hurt, but refused to quit the field. Marlborough and Boufflers escaped almost by miracle. The generals were devotedly served by their officers and troops; and the list of casualties presents an unusual number of names of the highest ranks. The official returns of the confederates show a loss of 18,250 men; that of the French was probably considerably less. Villars asserted that it did not amount to 6000, and that the loss of the allies was 35,000. In his anxiety for the honour of his troops, the Marshal said too much; for if their loss was comparatively so small, they ought never to have been beaten. Nevertheless, there was some semblance of truth in his gasconade, that such another victory would destroy the enemy; nor were the results commensurate in importance with the loss of men. Mons was taken, and the campaign concluded.

After placing his troops in winter quarters, the Duke, according to his usual practice, repaired to London. He found his favour on the decline, and the Whig ministry greatly shaken; and after undergoing many vexations, and having been on the point of resigning his command, he was glad to hasten his return to Holland. The most important events of the campaign of 1710 were the capture of Douay, followed by that of the smaller fortresses of St. Venant and Aire. The triple line of fortresses, which protected France on the side of the Netherlands, was nearly broken through by these successes, and the capture of Arras would have opened the way to Paris; but the skilful conduct of Villars rendered it impossible to besiege that town, and checked the progress of Marlborough, without risking a battle. In the course of the summer the long-projected change of ministry was completed, and Marlborough, still retaining the command, was forced to act in concert with his bitter enemies. His correspondence strongly portrays the mortification which he felt, and his evil auguries as to the event of the war.

Villars spent the winter in completing a new series of lines, extending from Namur to the coast near Boulogne, by which he hoped to defend the interior of France; and, confident in their strength, he boasted that he had brought Marlborough to his ne plus ultra. To get within these lines was the British general’s first object; and, by a long and deep-laid series of masterly manœuvres, he fairly outwitted his antagonist, and passed the works which had cost such labour, without a shot being fired. This enabled him to take Bouchain, the last operation of the campaign. Marlborough’s ruin was now determined. He was deprived of his employments in the beginning of 1712, and the utmost virulence of party spirit was let loose against him. England therefore became uneasy to him, and he went abroad in the November following. He returned in August, 1714, and landed at Dover, just after the Queen’s death. On the accession of George I. he was treated with respect, and reinstated in his offices of Captain-general and Master of the Ordnance; but he was not admitted to take a leading part in the measures of government. In May, 1716, he was struck by palsy; but he recovered the possession of his bodily and mental powers, and continued to attend Parliament and discharge the regular duties of his office. He tendered his resignation, but the King, out of respect, declined to accept it. From henceforward, however, we consider his public life as at an end. He died of a fresh attack of palsy, June 16, 1722, in the 72d year of his age.

It will be observed that we have taken no notice of Marlborough’s conduct as a negotiator and a statesman, though for a time he was the master-spring which regulated, with princely power, the operations of half Europe. Our apology for this must be found in the length of this memoir: to have entered upon that still more complicated part of the subject would have doubled it. And if we have omitted to discuss the various heavy charges made against Marlborough’s character, it is not that we believe or wish to represent him as a faultless hero, but that in such a memoir as this it is fairer, and to better purpose, to set forward the exceeding value of the services which he rendered to his country, than to expose his failings in a prominent light. And we believe those charges for which there was any ground to have been greatly exaggerated by party spirit.

The private character of Marlborough was adorned by many virtues, but lessened by some weaknesses which laid him very open to the venomed ridicule of his enemies; we allude to his avarice, and his deference for his busy and imperious wife. He was prudent, clearsighted, and not deceived nor led away by his passions; faithful to his domestic, and diligent in the performance of his religious, duties. In the field he was humane, sedulous to promote the comfort of his soldiers, and especially anxious, after battles, to minister all possible help and relief to the wounded. He was zealous in enforcing respect to the observances of religion, and in endeavouring to raise the moral character of his troops. “His camp,” says a biographer who had served in it, “resembled a great, well-governed city. Cursing and swearing were seldom heard among the officers; a sot and a drunkard was the object of scorn; and the poor soldiers, many of them the refuse and dregs of the nation, became, at the close of one or two campaigns, tractable, civil, sensible, and clean, and had an air and spirit above the vulgar.”

The Duchess of Marlborough collected ample materials for her husband’s life, and committed the task of writing it first to Glover, then to Mallet. Neither of them, however, executed the commission. Ledyard, who served under the Duke, published a life of him (from which the above quotation is taken), in three volumes 8vo., in 1736. The latest and the most important is that of Mr. Coxe. The materials for the Duke’s military history are abundant, but scattered: they will be found indicated and referred to in Coxe. His political history will be found in the histories of the times; and the literature of the age—the works of Burnet, Swift, Bolingbroke, and others—contain abundant references to the public and private actions of this great man.

[Blenheim House.]

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.
ABBÉ DE L’EPÉE.
From the original by Desine in the possession of the
Abbé Salvan, at Paris.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall East.

DE L’EPÉE.

Among those persons who possess the highest claim to the gratitude of mankind, that of having devoted their lives, without a selfish motive, to the alleviation of human misery, the Abbé de l’Epée claims a high and honourable place. Time, as is usual in cases of real excellence, has established on a sure basis merits which were at first slowly acknowledged. Unknown, and unappreciated, this good man lived for many years in obscurity; and, worse than this, he had to endure intolerance and persecution during the greater part of his beneficent career. There exists no memoir worthy of his exalted character. The brilliant genius of Bouilly has glanced upon his virtues and his talents; the eulogy of Bébian (himself a living and a worthy successor in the art of teaching the deaf and dumb) has shed additional lustre on a fame already bright; but still we have much to desire. Our glimpses of the good Abbé in his public capacity, and in the retirement which he loved and courted, only present us with a faint outline of his character,—an outline, however, which is sufficiently distinct to show that the finished picture would have been surpassingly beautiful.