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DE GRAMMONT'S LAST HOURS.

ed Dame de Palais. Her career was less brilliant than in England. The French ladies deemed her haughty and old, and even termed her une Anglaise insupportable.

She had certainly too much virtue, and perhaps too much beauty still, for the Parisian ladies of fashion at that period to admire her.

She endeavored, in vain, to reclaim her libertine husband, and to call him to a sense of his situation when he was on his death-bed. Louis XIV. sent the Marquis de Dangeau to convert him, and to talk to him on a subject little thought of by De Grammont-the world to come. After the marquis had been talking for some time, De Grammont turned to his wife and said, "Countess, if you don't look to it, Dangeau will juggle you out of my conversion." St. Evremond said he would gladly die to go off with so successful a bon-mot.

He became, however, in time, serious, if not devout or penitent. Ninon de l'Enclos having written to St. Evremond that the Count de Grammont had not only recovered but had become devout, St. Evremond answered her in these words:

"I have learned with a great deal of pleasure that the Count de Grammont has recovered his former health and acquired a new devotion.”

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A report having been circulated that De Grammont was dead, St. Evremond expressed deep regret. The report was contradicted by Ninon de l'Enclos. The count was then eighty-six years of age; "nevertheless he was," Ninon says, so young that I think him as lively as when he hated sick people, and loved them after they had recovered their health;" a trait very descriptive of a man whose good-nature was always on the surface, but whose selfishness was deep as that of most wits and beaux, who are spoiled by the world, and

*"The Count de Grammont fell dangerously ill in the year 1696, of which the King (Louis XIV.) being informed, and knowing, besides, that he was inclined to libertinism, he was pleased to send the Marquis of Dangeau to see how he did, and to advise him to think of God. Hereupon Count de Grammont, turning toward his wife, who had ever been a very devout lady, told her, Countess, if you don't look to it, Dangeau will juggle you out of my conversion.' Madame de l'Enclos having afterward written to M. de St. Evremond that Count de Grammont was recovered, and turned devout, 'I have learned,' answered he to her, 'with a great deal of pleasure that Count de Grammont has recovered his former health, and acquired a new devotion. Hitherto I have been contented with being a plain, honest man; but I must do something more; and I only wait for your example to become a devotee. You live in a country where people have wonderful advantages of saving their souls: there, vice is almost as opposite to the mode as virtue; sinning passes for ill-breeding, and shocks decency and good manners as much as religion. Formerly it was enough to be wicked, now one must be a scoundrel withal, to be damned in France.'

WHAT MIGHT HE NOT HAVE BEEN?

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who, in return, distrust and deceive the spoilers. This long life of eighty-six years, endowed as De Grammont was with elasticity of spirits, good fortune, considerable talent, an excellent position, a wit that never ceased to flow in a clear current; with all these advantages, what might he not have been to society had his energy been well applied, his wit innocent, his talents employed worthily, and his heart as sure to stand muster as his manners?

BEAU FIELDING.

"LET us be wise, boys, here's a fool coming," said a sensible man, when he saw Beau Nash's splendid carriage draw up to the door. Is a beau a fool? Is a sharper a fool? Was Bonaparte a fool? If you reply "no" to the last two questions, you must give the same answer to the first. A beau is a fox, but not a fool-a very clever fellow, who, knowing the weakness of his brothers and sisters in the world, takes advantage of it to make himself a fame and a fortune. Nash, the son of a glass-merchant-Brummell, the hopeful of a small shopkeeper—became the intimates of princes, dukes, and fashionables; were petty_kings of Vanity Fair, and were honored by their subjects. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king; in the realm of folly, the sharper is a monarch. The only proviso is, that the cheat come not within the jurisdiction of the law. Such a cheat is the beau or dandy, or fine gentleman, who imposes on his public by his clothes and appearance. Bonâ-fide monarchs have done as much; Louis XIV. won himself the title of Le Grand Monarque by his manners, his dress, and his vanity. Fielding, Nash, and Brummell did nothing more. It is not a question whether such roads to eminence be contemptible or not, but whether their adoption in one station of life be more so than in another. Was Brummell a whit more contemptible than "Wales ?" Or is John Thomas, the pride and glory of the "Domestics' Free-and-Easy," whose whiskers, figure, face, and manner are all superb, one atom more ridiculous than your recognized beau? I trow not. What right, then, has your beau to a place among wits? I fancy Chesterfield would be much disgusted at seeing his name side by side with that of Nash in this volume; yet Chesterfield had no objection, when at Bath, to do homage to the king of that city, and may have prided himself on exchanging pinches from diamond-set snuff-boxes with that superb gold-laced dignitary in the Pump-room. Certainly, people who thought little of Philip Dormer Stanhope thought a great deal of the glass-merchant's reprobate son when he was in power, and submitted without a murmur to his impertinences. The fact is, that the beaux and the wits are more intimately connected than the latter would care to own: the wits have all been, or aspired to be, beaux, and beaux have had their fair share of wit; both

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ON WITS AND BEAUX.

lived for the same purpose-to shine in society; both used the same means, coats, and bon-mots. The only distinction is, that the garments of the beaux were better, and their sayings not so good as those of the wits; while the conversation of the wits was better, and their apparel not so striking as those of the beaux. So, my Lord Chesterfield, who prided yourself quite as much on being a fine gentleman as on being a fine wit, you can not complain at your proximity to Mr. Nash and others who were fine gentlemen, and would have been fine wits if they could.

Robert Fielding was, perhaps, the least of the beaux; but then, to make up for this, he belonged to a noble family; he married a duchess, and, what is more, he beat her. Surely in the kingdom of fools such a man is not to be despised. You may be sure he did not think he was, for was he not made the subject of two papers in "The Tatler," and what more could a man desire ?

His father was a Suffolk squire, claiming relationship with the Earls of Denbigh, and, therefore, with the Hapsburgs, from whom the Beau and the Emperors of Austria had the common honor of being descended. Perhaps neither of them had sufficient sense to be proud of the greatest intellectual ornament of their race, the author of "Tom Jones;" but as our hero was dead before the humorist was born, it is not fair to conjecture what he might have thought on the subject.

It does not appear that very much is known of this great gem of the race of Hapsburg. He had the misfortune to be very handsome, and the folly to think that his face would be his fortune: it certainly stood him in good stead at times, but it also brought him into a lamentable dilemma.

His father was not rich, and sent his son to the Temple to study laws which he was only fitted to break. The young Adonis had sense enough to see that destiny did not beckon him to fame in the gloom of a musty law court, and removed a little farther up to the Thames, and the more fashionable region of Scotland Yard. Here, where now Z. 300 repairs to report his investigations to a Commissioner, the young dandies of Charles II.'s day strutted in gay doublets, swore hasty oaths of choice invention, smoked the true Tobago from huge pipebowls, and ogled the fair but not too bashful dames who passed to and fro in their chariots. The court took its name from the royalties of Scotland, who, when they visited the South, were there lodged as being conveniently near to Whitehall Palace. It is odd enough that the three architects, Inigo Jones, Vanbrugh, and Wren, all lived in this yard.

It was not to be supposed that a man who could so well