human doctrines, that only tend to elate and | magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is-I repeat it-a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them. The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth-to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinize and expose-to raise the gilding, and shew base metal under it-to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him. Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good concerning him, but evil: probably he liked the sycophant son of Chenaanah better; yet might Ahab have escaped a bloody death, had he but stopped his ears to flattery, and opened them to faithful counsel. There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle delicate ears; who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of society much as the son of Imlah came before the throned kings of Judah and Israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as prophet-like and as vital-a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is the satirist of "Vanity Fair" admired in high places? I cannot tell; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greekfire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time they or their seed might yet escape a fatal Ramoth-Gilead. Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, reader, because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognized; because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day-as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things. Why did they send me so far and so lonely, Watch o'er the steps of a poor orphan child. Yet distant and soft the night-breeze is blowing, God in his mercy protection is shewing, Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child. Ev'n should I fall o'er the broken bridge passing, There is a thought that for strength should avail me, CHARLOTTE BRONTE. FREDERICK THE GREAT. About fourscore years ago, there used to be seen sauntering on the terraces of SansSouci, for a short time in the afternoon, or you might have met him elsewhere at an earlier hour, riding or driving in a rapid business manner, on the open roads or through the scraggy woods and avenues of that intricate amphibious Potsdam region, a highly interesting lean little old man, of alert though slightly stooping figure; whose name among strangers was King Friedrich the Second, or Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the common people, who much loved and esteemed him, was Vater Fritz-Father Fred-a name of familiarity which had not bred contempt in that instance. He is a king every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king. Presents himself in a Spartan simplicity of vesture: no crown but an old military cocked-hat generally old, or trampled and kneaded into absolute soft. ness, if new; no sceptre but one like Agamemnon's, a walking-stick cut from the woods, which serves also as a riding-stick (with which he hits the horses "between the ears," say authors); and for royal robes, a mere soldier's blue coat with red facings-coat likely to be old, and sure to have a good deal of Spanish snuff on the breast of it; rest of the apparel dim, unobtrusive in colour or cut, ending in high over-knee military boots, which may be brushed (and, I hope, kept soft with an underhand suspicion of oil), but are not permitted to be blackened or varnished; Day and Martin with their soot-pots forbidden to approach. The man is not of godlike physiognomy, any more than of imposing stature or costume; close-shut mouth with thin lips, prominent jaws and nose, receding brow, by no means of Olympian height; head, however, is of long form, and has superlative gray eyes in it. Not what is called a beautiful man; nor yet, by all appearance, what is called a happy. On the contrary, the face bears evidence of many sorrows, as they are termed, of much hard labour done in this world; and seems to anticipate nothing but more still coming. Quiet stoicism, capable enough of what joy there were, but not expecting any worth mention; great unconscious and some conscious pride, well tempered with a cheery mockery of humour, are written on that old face, which carries its chin well forward, in spite of the slight stoop about the neck; snuffy nose, rather flung into the air, under its old cocked-hat, like an old snuffy lion on the watch; and such a pair of eyes as no man, or lion, or lynx of that century bore elsewhere, according to all the testimony we have. "Those eyes," says Mirabeau, "which, at the bidding of his great soul, fascinated you with seduction or with terror" (portaient au gré de son âme héroïque, la séduction ou la terreur). Most excellent, potent, brilliant eyes, swift-darting as the stars, steadfast as the sun; gray, we said, of the azure-gray colour; large enough, not of glaring size; the habitual expression of them vigilance and penetrating sense, rapidity resting on depth. Which is an excellent combination; and gives us the notion of a lambent outer radiance springing from some great inner sea of light and fire in the man. The voice, if he speak to you, is of similar physiognomy: clear, melodious, and sonorous; all tones are in it, from that of ingenuous inquiry, graceful sociality, light-flowing banter (rather prickly for most part), up to definite word of command, up to desolating word of rebuke and reprobation: a voice "the clearest and most agreeable in conversation I ever heard," says witty Dr. Moore. "He speaks a great deal," continues the doctor; "yet those who hear him regret that he does not speak a good deal more. His observations are always lively, very often just; and few men possess the talent of repartee in greater perfection' The French Revolution may be said to have, for about half a century, quite submerged Friedrich, abolished him from the memories of men; and now on coming to light again, he is found defaced under strange mud-incrustations, and the eyes of mankind look at him from a singularly changed, what we must call oblique and perverse point of vision. This is one of the difficulties in dealing with his history-especially if you happen to believe both in the French Revolution and in him; that is to say, both that Real Kingship is eternally indispensable, and also that the Destruction of Sham Kingship (a frightful process) is occasionally so. On the breaking out of that formidable Explosion and Suicide of his Century, Friedrich sank into comparative obscurity eclipsed amid the ruins of that universal earthquake, the very dust of which darkened all the air, and made of day a disastrous midnight. Black midnight, broken only by the blaze of conflagrations; wherein, to our terrified imaginations, were seen, not men, French and other, but ghastly portents, stalking wrathful, and shapes of avenging gods. It must be owned the figure of Napoleon was titanic especially to the generation that looked on him, and that waited shuddering to be devoured by him. In general, in that French Revolution, all was on a huge scale; if not greater than anything in human experience, at least more grandiose. All was recorded in bulletins, too, addressed to the shilling-gallery; and there were fellows on the stage with such a breadth of sabre, extent of whiskerage, strength of windpipe, and command of men and gunpowder, as had never been seen before. How they bellowed, stalked, and flourished about; counterfeiting Jove's thunder to an amazing degree! Terrific Drawcansir figures, of enormous whiskerage, unlimited command of gunpowder; not without suffi cient ferocity, and even a certain heroism, stage-heroism in them; compared with whom, to the shilling-gallery, and frightened excited theatre at large, it seemed as if there had been no generals or sovereigns before; as if Friedrich, Gustavus, Cromwell, William Conqueror, and Alexander the Great were not worth speaking of henceforth. THOMAS CARLYLE. AWAIT THE ISSUE. laws older than the world, old as the Maker's first plan of the world, it has to arrive there. In this God's world, with its wild whirling Await the issue. In all battles, if you eddies and mad foam oceans, where men await the issue, each fighter has prospered and nations perish as if without law, and according to his right. His right and his judgment for an unjust thing is sternly de- might, at the close of the account, were one layed, dost thou think that there is therefore and the same. He has fought with all his no justice? It is what the fool hath said in might, and in exact proportion to all his his heart. It is what the wise, in all times, right he has prevailed. His very death is no were wise because they denied, and knew victory over him. He dies, indeed; but his for ever not to be. I tell thee again, there work lives, very truly lives. A heroic Walis nothing else but justice. One strong lace, quartered on the scaffold, cannot hinthing I find here below: the just thing, the der that his Scotland become, one day, a true thing. My friend, if thou hadst all the part of England; but he does hinder that it artillery of Woolwich trundling at thy back become, on tyrannous unfair terms, a part of in support of an unjust thing; and infinite it; commands still, as with a god's voice, bonfires visibly waiting ahead of thee, to from his old Valhalla and Temple of the blaze centuries long for thy victory on be- Brave, that there be a just, real union, as of half of it, I would advise thee to call halt, to brother and brother, not a false and merely fling down thy baton, and say, "In God's semblant one as of slave and master. If name, No!" Thy "success?" Poor devil, the union with England be in fact one of what will thy success amount to? If the Scotland's chief blessings, we thank Wallace thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded; withal that it was not the chief curse. Scotno, not though bonfires blazed from north land is not Ireland; no, because brave men to south, and bells rang, and editors wrote rose there, and said, "Behold, ye must not leading articles, and the just things lay tread us down like slaves; and ye shall not, trampled out of sight, to all mortal eyes an and cannot!" Fight on, thou brave, true abolished and annihilated thing. Success? heart, and falter not, through dark fortune In a few years thou wilt be dead and dark and through bright. The cause thou fight-all cold, eyeless, deaf; no blaze of bon-est for, so far as it is true, no further, yet fires, ding-dong of bells, or leading articles visible or audible to thee again at all for What kind of success is that? It is true all goes by approximation in this world; with any not insupportable approximation we must be patient. There is a noble Conservatism as well as an ignoble. Would to Heaven, for the sake of Conservatism itself, the noble alone were left, and the ignoble, by some kind severe hand, were ruthlessly lopped away, forbidden any more to show itself! For it is the right and noble alone that will have victory in this struggle; the rest is wholly an obstruction, a postponement and fearful imperilment of the victory. Towards an eternal centre of right and nobleness, and of that only, is all this confusion tending. We already know whither it is tending; what will have victory, what will have none! The Heaviest will reach the centre. The Heaviest, sinking through complex fluctuating media and vortices, has its deflections, its obstructions, nay, at times its resiliences, its reboundings; whereupon some blockhead shall be heard jubilating: "See, your Heaviest ascends!" but at all moments it is moving centreward, fast as is convenient for it; sinking, sinking; and, by ever. VOL. III. precisely so far, is very sure of victory. The falsehood alone of it will be conquered, will be abolished, as it ought to be; but the truth. of it is part of Nature's own laws, co-operates with the world's eternal tendencies, and cannot be conquered. THOMAS CARLYLE.. IN THE DOWNHILL OF LIFE. [JOHN COLLINS, of whom we can learn nothing except that he was one of the proprietors of the Birmingham Daily Chronicle, and died in 1808.] In the downhill of life, when I find I'm declining, Than a snug elbow-chair can afford for reclining, And a cot that o'erlooks the wide sea; With an ambling pad-pony to pace o'er the lawn, And blithe as the lark that each day hails the dawn, Look forward with hope for to-morrow. With a porch at my door, both for shelter and shade too, With a barn for the use of the flail: A cow for my dairy, a dog for my game, And a purse when a friend wants to borrow; I'll envy no nabob his riches or fame, Nor what honors await him to-morrow. From the bleak northern blast may my cot be completely Secured by a neighbouring hill; And at night may repose steal upon me more sweetly And while peace and plenty I find at my board, And when I at last must throw off this frail covering But my face in the glass I'll serenely survey, And with smiles count each wrinkle and furrow; And this old worn-out stuff which is threadbare to-day, May become everlasting to-morrow. LINES WRITTEN IN THE CHURCHYARD OF RICHMOND, YORKSHIRE. [HERBERT KNOWLES, a native of Canterbury (1798– 1817), produced, when a youth of eighteen, the following fine religious stanzas, which, being published in an article by Southey in the Quarterly Review, soon obtained general circulation and celebrity: they have much of the steady faith and devotional earnestness of Cowper.] Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.-Matthew, xvii. 4. Methinks it is good to be here, If thou wilt, let us build-but for whom? But the shadows of eve that encompass with gloom Shall we build to Ambition? Ah no! Affrighted, he shrinketh away; For see, they would pin him below In a small narrow cave, and, begirt with cold clay, To Beauty? Ah no! she forgets Nor knows the foul worm that he frets The skin which but yesterday fools could adore, Shall we build to the purple of Pride, The trappings which dizen the proud, Alas! they are all laid aside, And here 's neither dress nor adornments allowed, To Riches? Alas! 'tis in vain; Who hid, in their turns have been hid; The treasures are squandered again; And here in the grave are all metals forbid But the tinsel that shines on the dark coffin-lid. To the pleasures which Mirth can afford, The revel, the laugh, and the jeer? Ah! here is a plentiful board! But the guests are all mute as their pitiful cheer, And none but the worm is a reveller here. Shall we build to Affection and Love? Ah no! they have withered and died, Or fled with the spirit above. Friends, brothers, and sisters are laid side by side, Yet none have saluted and none have replied. Unto Sorrow?-the dead cannot grieve; Not a sob, not a sigh meets mine ear, Which Compassion itself could relieve. Ah, sweetly they slumber, nor love, hope, or fear; Peace! peace is the watchword, the only one here. Unto Death, to whom monarchs must bow? Ah no! for his empire is known, And here there are trophies enow! Beneath the cold dead, and around the dark stone, Are the signs of a sceptre that none may disown. The first tabernacle to Hope we will build, And look for the sleepers around us to rise ! The second to Faith, which insures it fulfilled; And the third to the Lamb of the great sacrifice, Who bequeathed us them both when He rose to the skies. LETTER TO MONSIEUR DE COULANGES. [MARIE DE RABUTIN-CHANTAL, Marquise de Sévigné, was born in 1626, in Paris, and died in 1696. She received a fine education, married a nobleman at eighteen, and was greatly admired in society for her wit and beauty. The Duchesses de Longueville and Chevreuse were among her intimate friends. Her chief distinction rests upon her letters to her daughter, Madame de Grignan,-not intended for publication,-many of which are admirable specimens of vivacious and piquant epistolary style.] PARIS, Monday, Dec. 15, 1670. I am going to tell you a thing, the most astonishing, the most surprising, the most marvellous, the most miraculous, the most magnificent, the most confounding, the most unheard-of, the most singular, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most But the long winding-sheet and the fringe of the unforeseen, the greatest, the least, the rarest, shroud. the most common, the most public, the most DESCRIPTION OF A FUNERAL PARIS, Friday, May 6, 1672. private till to-day, the most brilliant, the most enviable;-in short, a thing of which there is but one example in past ages, and that not an exact one either; a thing that we cannot believe at Paris; how, then, will it gain credence at Lyons? a thing which makes everybody cry, "Lord have mercy upon us!" a thing which causes the greatest joy to Madame de Rohan and Madame de Hauterive; a thing, in fine, which is to happen on Sunday next, when those who are present will doubt the evidence of their senses; a thing which, though it is to be done on Sunday, yet perhaps will not be finished on Monday. I can not bring myself to tell you; guess what it is. I give you three times to do it in. What, not a word to throw at a dog? Well, then, I find I must tell you. Monsieur de Lauzun is to be mar-were four figures of Death, bearing the ried next Sunday at the Louvre, to pray guess to whom! I give you four times to do it in, I give you six,—I give you a hundred. Says Madame de Coulanges: "It is really very hard to guess; perhaps it is Madame de la Vallière.' My Dear Child:-I must return to narration, it is a folly I can never resist. Prepare, therefore, for a description. I was yesterday at a service performed in honou of the Chancellor Segnier at the Oratory. Painting, sculpture, music, rhetoric, in a word, the four liberal arts, were at the expense of it. Nothing could exceed the beauty of the decorations; they were finely imagined, and designed by Le Brun. The mausoleum reached to the top of the dome, adorned with a thousand lamps, and a va riety of figures characteristic of him in whose honour it was erected. Beneath marks of his several dignities, as having taken away his honours with his life. One of them held his helmet, another his ducal coronet, another the ensigns of his order, another his chancellor's mace. The four sister arts, painting, music, eloquence, and sculpture were represented in deep distress, bewailing the loss of their protector. The first representation was supported by the four virtues, fortitude, temperance, justice, and religion. Above these, four angels, or genii, received the soul of the deceased, and seemed pruning their purple wings to bear their precious charge to heaven. The mausoleum was adorned with a variety of little seraphs, who supported an illuminated shrine, which was fixed to the top of the cupola. Nothing so magnificent or so well imagined was ever seen; it is Le Brun's Indeed, madam, it is not. "It is Mademoiselle de Retz, then." No, nor she either; you are extremely provincial. "Lord bless me," say you, "what stupid wretches we are! it is Mademoiselle de Colbert all the while." Nay, now you are still further from the mark. 'Why, then, it must certainly be Mademoiselle de Crequy." You have it not yet. Well, I find I must tell you at last. He is to be married next Sunday at the Louvre, with the king's leave, to Mademoiselle-Mademoiselle de Mademoiselle -guess, pray guess her name; he is to be married to Mademoiselle, the great Made-master-piece. moiselle; Mademoiselle, daughter to the late Monsieur; Mademoiselle, grand-daughter of Henry the IVth; Mademoiselle d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Mademoiselle, the king's cousin-german,-Mademoiselle, destined to the throne,-Mademoiselle, the only match in France that was worthy of Monsieur. What glorious matter for talk! If you should burst forth like a bedlamite, say we have told you a lie, that it is false, that we are making a jest of you, and that a pretty jest it is, without wit or invention; in short, if you abuse us, we shall think you are quite in the right; for we have done just the same things ourselves. Farewell, you will find by the letters you receive this post, whether we tell you truth or not. The whole church was adorned with pictures, devices, and emblems, which all bore some relation to the life, or office, of the chancellor; and some of his noblest actions were represented in painting. Madame de Verneuil offered to purchase all the decoration at a great price; but it was unanimously resolved by those who had contributed to it, to adorn a gal lery with it, and to consecrate it as an everlasting monument of their gratitude and magnificence. The assembly was grand and numerous, but without confusion. I sat next to Monsieur de Tulle, Madame Colbert and the Duke of Monmouth, who is as handsome as when we saw him at the palais royal. (Let me tell you in a parenthesis, that he is going to the army to join the king.) A young father of the Oratory came to speak the funeral oration. I de |