jugement des domestiques me paraît être l'épreuve la plus sure et la plus difficile de la vertu des maîtres... On a dit qu'il n'y avait point de héros pour son valet-de-chambre: cela peut être ; mais l'homme juste a l'estime de son valet: ce qui montre assez que l'héroïsme n'a qu'une vaine apparence, et qu'il n'y a rien de solide que la vertu."* Remembering this passage, and remembering that Rousseau was laquais once, and that some shreds of the livery he seems never to have quite shaken off, we must not forget the conversation between him and Bernardin de SaintPierre, who, seeing him much affected, attendri, one day, by some ceremony in public worship, said to him, "If Fénelon were living now, you would be a Catholic." "Oh! if Fénelon were living," exclaimed Rousseau, in a flood of tears, "I would try to be made his lacquey, that I might become worthy of being his valet-de-chambre."+ There is real heart, no doubt, in this outburst of Jean Jacques-and real hot water in those tears; but there is a soupçon of the ex-serving-man as well-a smack of the John Jeames who once wore the shoulder-knot, and served at table, and got his fellow-servants into disgrace. We question whether any good name-the name of any first-rate man -can be cited in favour of the hero-and-valet adage, in its popular significance. No substantial authority will be found to endorse that bill. No grand jury of good men and true would be talked into finding it a true bill: any such grand jury would, without much time lost in deliberation, ignore it, throw it out. Mr. Thackeray might seem as likely as any one to accept it, and as competent as any one to enforce its meaning-to prove it a wise saw, by a throng of modern instances. And indeed he does moralise on the extent to which valets canvass the august secrets of their masters, of the very highest ton; and bids us take it as a rule that "John knows everything: and as in our humble world, so in the greatest: a duke is no more a hero to his valet-de-chambre than you or I." But we have seen the kindly turn he gives to the proverb in his report of Father Mathew; and depend upon it, he could, as well as any man, make the proverb more damaging to valet than hero. Goethe quotes the proverb only to repudiate it—or at least to explain it away. Hegel had done this already, emphatically enough, in his Philosophy of History: "Nicht aber darum weil dieser [scil. hero] kein Held ist, sondern weil jener [scil. valet] der Kammerdiener ist."§ No man is a hero to his valet?-that, says Goethe, is only because it requires a hero to recognise a hero: the valet will probably know how to value the valet-hero. No generous soul delights in valet criticism. Says Lady Mary Wortley-who nevertheless had a constitutional bias that way— "I don't know what comfort other people find in considering the weakness of great men (because, perhaps, it brings them nearer to their level), but 'tis always a mortification to me, to observe that there is no perfection in humanity."T Gui Joli had been a domestique in the service of Cardinal de Retz, and took advantage of his position to introduce into his Memoirs an overplus of testimony to the cardinal's failings and weak La Nouvelle Héloïse, partie iv. lettre x. † See Sainte-Beuve's essay on the "Confessions." (1850.), Pendennis, ch. xxxvi. Wahlverwandtschaften, b. ii. § vi. § Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte. Lady M. W. Montague to the Countess of Mar, Jan. 16, 1717. points détails honteux, a modern critic has called them, which may be true as regards the material facts, but are false inasmuch as they are exclusively mean, which De Retz was not. It is a relief to contrast with Gui Joli's valet-verdict, the homage of a celebrated avocat, one of the earliest members of the French Academy-bel-esprit poli, honnête homme et pauvre-the estimable Patru. Not that De Retz came within leagues of being a very hero; but Gui Joli went far towards proving himself a very valet. What Dean Trench calls the unheroic character of most men's minds, with their consequent intolerance of that heroic which they cannot understand, is constantly at work.† Familiarity destroys reverence-but, asks Richardson (through the medium of Clarissa), "but with whom?— Not with those, surely, who are prudent, grateful, and generous." Every jeune homme who is worth his salt, may be said to desire passionately, in Marmontel's phrase, "d'être admis dans l'intimité d'un Héros et de puiser dans son âme, comme à la source de la sagesse, de la gloire, et de la vertu."§ And given the Hero, who but a valet will be sent empty away? It is not observed, says Emerson, that "the valets of painters have any elevation of thought;" and again: "There are graces in the demeanour of a polished and noble person, which are lost upon the eye of a churl."|| We may take exception to the letter of Roederer's particular instance, but can acquiesce in the general spirit of it, when he writes: "Il n'y a point de héros pour son valet-de-chambre,' dit le proverbe; je le crois, parce que les grands cœurs ne sont pas toujours de grands esprits. Mais le proverbe aurait tort pour Bonaparte. Plus on l'approche et plus on le respecte. On le trouve toujours plus grand que soi quand il parle, quand il pense, quand il agit." When this was written, Bonaparte was First Consul only. As ex-Emperor, in the island of St. Helena, there might be-as a mere fact there have been-other tales to tell of him. Of Frederick the Great, again, it has been remarked by a French critic, whom that monarch's Correspondence enabled to "penetrate into the soul and the inmost thoughts of a king veritably great"—and whose mind was thus impressed years before Mr. Carlyle's panegyric saw the light-that, "like all great men, he [Old Fritz aforesaid] inspires you with a more thoughtful admiration the more closely you come to know him."** What would Voltaire have said of this? M. Sainte-Beuve implicitly writes him down valet, in thus reporting of his black beast, the hero of Potsdam. Coleridge cites Sir Alexander Ball as "a living confutation of the assertion attributed to the Prince of Condé, that no man appeared great to his valet-de-chambre❞—and then characterises that saying as one "which, I suspect, owes its currency less to its truth than to the envy of mankind and the misapplication of the word, great, to actions unconnected with reason and free-will."++ Zenobia tells Coverdale, with undisguised bitterness, in Mr. Hawthorne's romance, that he is very pardonable for fancying Hollingsworth * Sainte-Beuve. † English, Past and Present. § Bélisaire, ch. vi. Clarissa Harlowe, vol. ii. letter xxviii. Essays, No. IV., "Spiritual Laws." Roederer, Journal de Paris, Janvier, 1801. **Causeries du Lundi, t. vii., "Frédéric le Grand." (1853.) tt The Friend, by S. T. Coleridge, vol. iii. (her model hero) ridiculous: "Doubtless, he is so-to you! There can be no truer test of the noble and heroic, in any individual, than the degree in which he possesses the faculty of distinguishing heroism from absurdity." !看 How often, and how strenuously, has Mr. Carlyle treated the adage with similar contempt! No other writer comes near him in the frequency and emphasis of his strictures upon it for he looks upon it, evidently, as a maxim that has eaten its way into the shallow hearts of shallow men, and that must be got rid of as a hateful sophism, wholly noisome and false. Thus, in one place, he says that, after many other isms, which infect the age, "as the sum of all, comes Valetism, the reverse of Heroism; sad root of all woes whatsoever." He upbraids the age with its quasi-belief that Heroism means gas-lighted Histrionism; that seen with clear eyes' (as they call Valet-eyes), no man is a Hero, or ever was a Hero, but all men are Valets and Varlets. The accursed practical quintessence of all sorts of Unbelief!"+"The men of the Dead Sea discovered, as the valet-species always does in heroes or prophets, no comeliness in Moses." Elsewhere, again: "No man, it hath been said, is a hero to his valet and this is probably true; but the fault is at least as likely to be the valet's as the hero's. For it is certain, that to the vulgar eye few things are wonderful that are not distant. It is difficult for them to believe that the man, the mere man whom they see," nay perhaps painfully feel, toiling at their side through the poor jostlings of existence, can be made of finer clay than themselves."§ And yet once again, years later: "On the whole, that theory of no man being a hero to his valet,' carries us but a little way into the real nature of the case. With a superficial meaning which is plain enough, it essentially holds good only of such heroes as are false, or else of such valets as are too genuine, as are shoulder-knotted and brass-lackered in soul as well as in body of other sorts it does not hold. Milton was still a hero to the good Elwood." A contemporary poet, in the Dedication prefixed to his' leading work of art, has cried shame on the adage, in the same spirit of veneration for the hero and scorn for the valet : Thou art but held at higher rate † Past and Present, book iii. ch. iia Critical Miscellanies, vol. i., " Burns." Chauncy Hare Townshend. VOL. XLVII. 2 T 630 GUY VILLIERS; OR, HOW THE MAJOR SHOT HIS TIGER AND CHANGED HIS LOVES. BY OUIDA. I. WE IMITATE THE ARABIAN NIGHTS IN A CRIMEAN CAMP. Six years ago I was let me see, how old?-nine-and-twenty (by George! time flies, doesn't it?), and six years ago I was captain in the Queen's Roans, a slap-up corps, as we knew when we rode beside them to our plucky tomfoolery at Balaklava the other day. There were a very nice set of fellows in it then, and the Queen's Roans were the pets of the Exeter ladies. There was pretty little Pat Peel, the most impudent dog in the service; and there was Dandy Kingslake, who made and broke off six separate engagements with Devonshire beauties that very summer; and there was Mortlock, who had won the Grand Military, and was a great man on the turf; and Jack Trefusis, the best whist-player at the Junior United; and Lemongenseidlitz, an Austrian, who hit the pips in a pack of cards like Monte Cristo; and there was last, yet most decidedly not least, the Major, Guy Villiers, my chum and demigod. Slight and middle height, but such muscle!-couldn't he play a thirty-pound salmon, and send a man down just by straightening his left arm-a face that the women called beautiful-and upon my life it was cut as clearly as one of Roubilliac's statues. After him all the girls went like mad; it was a customary saying that he had two hundred young ladies ready to propose to him if he would but give them an opportunity, though he was not an elder son, and had little besides his majority, which had been bought for him early, for he was only two-and-thirty at that time. He was a splendid fellow, with more wit and sense in his little finger than in the whole brains of men who set themselves up as walking encyclopædias, and more good at bottom than thousands of the Pharisees who vaunted themselves above him. "Well, old fellow," said Villiers, coming into my room one morning after parade, when the order had been read for the Queen's Roans to sail for Scinde to join the troops gathering under " Fighting Napier," "so we've a chance of active service at last, thank Heaven! I have had quite enough of playing the vie militaire, of reviews and sham sieges, lounging about town, and flirting in Exeter and York, haven't you? It rouses one's blood a bit to think of hearing the trumpets ring out 'Boot and saddle,' instead of the call to mess eternally day after day. I want to be having a regular set-to with the black devils, and sticking veritable pigs. By Jove! I quite long to be off and away. If I have ever wished for anything in life, it is to have an Indian campaign." I. "If you get all your wishes as easily realised, Villiers, you'll do," said "Yes, I must say I'm uncommonly glad myself that the Horse Guards have picked us out to go and serve with plucky old Charlie ; 'tisn't often the old women up there do one a good turn.' "I believe you," said Villiers, leaning his arm on the mantelpiece with his back to the fireplace to smoke more leisurely. "Ever since my cousin Phipps told me of his hunting trips up the jungle that lies along the Indus, where he would kill a tiger and a boar or two, and half a dozen hill-deer, in a day, and think nothing of it, not to mention knocking over hares and jackals, and netting ortolans and florikens, I have felt our doings among the stubble and turnips immeasurably small, and even a day with the Quorn or the Burton men nothing much to mention." "Except sport of one kind," said I, laughing; "and in that Lauzun himself couldn't beat you. You could take Molé's title, 'le vainqueur des femmes et le bienvenu des maris."" "Not I," said Villiers. "In that sport the birds fall at your feet of their own will, and if you don't take them up, will vow you are a brute, who kills them, and leaves them as proofs of his conquests." "A true bill sometimes," said I; "but, by Jove! Villiers, what will Miss Rosamond say to this move? How will she take it?" "I can't say, I'm sure," responded the Major, carelessly. "Do you mean to take her out with you ?" "Take her out with me? Certainly not. I don't want the bother of a wife out campaigning. No sensible man does, I should say." "Very philosophic, but not over-ardent.” 66 "I don't feel ardent," said Villiers, with immense nonchalance. "Get engaged five years, old fellow, and you'll find that the flames that burned with electric light brilliancy at the commencement, gradually decrease till they come to, I won't say a farthing rushlight, but a couple of those very moderate illuminators called compositions, with which Little Pat, when he's in a sentimental mood, sits through the midnight hours, scribbling alternate sonnets to Julia and the moon, his verse running out as his candles run down. That unlucky moon! I always pity her from my soul: if a lachrymose curate wants a bit of sentiment to touch the melting hearts of his ragged-school teachers-if a schoolboy falls in love with the presiding deity of the tuck shop-if a should-be-though-he-isn't mute and eminently inglorious Milton rushes into print and halting dithyrambics -if a spoon of a Strephon finds himself alone with a crinolined Chloris after an al fresco fête, when people are getting sentimental, and the oil in the coloured lamps very odoriferous-they will, as sure as fate, fall foul of the moon, and Casta Diva' is punished for her cruelty to Calisto and all classic flirtations by having millions of spooneys disturbing the holy silence of her night with raving dactyles and iambics à propos of her silver beauty.' "Gently, old fellow. Haven't you ever been guilty of sonnets yourself ?" "Scores of times. But, my dear boy, it is not the custom of Englishmen, any more than it was of the Pharisees, to take the beam out of their own eye before they look for the mote in their neighbour's. It's great fun to poke out the other people's motes and hold them up to the light and laugh at them, but when the operation is performed on oneself, 'tisn't altogether so pleasing. Jessie Montressor was very edifying last evening on the score of that pretty little Delafield's abominably flighty |