grate were too small and too near each other. The hook of the poker was soon straightened in the fire: of the fender-handle I was contented to declare, Il n'y a pas de mal à cela:' as the bars of my grate, though near, were not thick, they did not intercept more heat than usual. "Taking the precaution to have a wood fire in my second salon, I ventured to invite my friends to see my fire de charbon de terre. They were much surprised and pleased. Il n'y a pas de mauvaise odeur: ce feu se fait respecter: quelle chaleur!' The combined advantages of greater heat and less cost (for the coal fire was maintained at about half the expense of a wood fire) procured imitators." Every body is acquainted with the character and routine of a French dinner; and opinions with respect to its merits, as compared with our own cookery, are as various as upon debateable questions of a more important nature. It is curious to observe how great a mistake was universally, and still is generally, made concerning the substantial nature of a Frenchman's meal. He has been supposed to regale wholly on viands of the most unsufficing kind; to eat little meat, and drink a prodigious quantity of soup maigre. The direct contrary is the fact. An Englishman is quite surprised, on his first introduction to a French dinner party, to see the immense succession of dishes, and the heartiness with which each in turn is assailed. He is compelled to give in, long before his continental neighbour appears to be thoroughly warmed to his work. An ordinary Englishman will dine most contentedly from a single joint; the absence of which your Frenchman supplies by a dozen different dishes, each by its artificial preparation stimulating the appetite, which would otherwise naturally become jaded. On the relative healthiness of these two modes, it is not our business here to enlarge. We will subjoin the attempt of our author to improve on the French fashion. "It will be seen that the arbitrary parts of a French dinner are the made dishes and the sweets: the bouilli and rôti are obligatory; the former because you are hungry, the latter, lest you should still be so. I approve of the order in which the fish appears, having seen many persons choke themselves in England by eating of it with an appetite as yet unsatiated. Even to the fried-fish I ventured, contrary to usage, to add a sauce, (in a sauceboat, be it well understood) which those who partook of admitted to be an improvement. A stuffed turkey, with sausage balls, was allowed to be better than a dry rôti: a hare with a pudding and currant-jelly was declared to be delicious. I obtained permission to serve the cheese, as a thing of mauvaise odeur, by itself, recalling only the sallad, instead of making it a part of the dessert. By these means, and by the help of stuffed loins of mutton, roasted tongues, or boiled, with but little flavour of salt, new college puddings, and other unknown luxuries, too tedious to mention, (a phrase I ought to have employed long ago) I have the patriotic consolation of thinking that I gave a favourable idea of the English kitchen, which, in defiance of popular opinion, I affirm to be better than the French, though their artists in this line are superior. The chief differences are, that the French make prepared and high-seasoned dishes of their vegetables, and think it barbarous to eat them au naturel along with their meat; and that they will not believe that their meat contains any juice, or gravy, or flavour, till they have extracted it by culinary process, and laid it beside the meat in the dish. Indeed, their climate, which provides for them so many excellent things, refuses them pasture to fatten beef; but they have fine artificial grasses and hay: of every other object of gourmandise, except fat beef, they have all that the most voracious or the most delicate appetite can demand." There are some very sensible observations on the speculation of a freer importation of genuine French wines into this country, for which we must refer the reader to the volume itself. He will not be a little surprised to hear that, even as it is, French wines are not so uncommon as may be supposed; since, by means of a trade carried on between the French shores of the Mediteranean and Oporto, wines are shipped off to the latter place, which, by the aid of brandy and other modes of treatment, become good port wine for the London market. We suppose every good Catholic is bound to be, more or less, a believer in signs and prodigies. At all events, the author before us participates in this frailty, if such it be. He speaks with reverential caution of certain "miracles" of his church, and witnesses supernatural appearances in his bedchamber at night. These circumstances, whatever degree of faith, or want of it, his readers may entertain, are certainly not calculated to render the book less curious or interesting: "Quite the reverse." Together with the little history which serves as a preface, and another of a different and more mournful cast, towards the conclusion of the volume (an account of the illness and death of the author's eldest son) it gives to the whole work a very peculiar character, highly deserving an attentive perusal, which it will not fail to repaynot only in temporary entertainment, but in benefit of a far more sterling kind-exposition of a man's mind and conduct, and of the events which occurred to him during a foreign residence, calculated to afford much useful speculation to the philosophical canvasser of human motive and action, and to display the candid individual himself in an amiable point of view. THE HAMPTON COURT BEAUTIES. "What god-what genius, did the pencil move, THE "Beauties at Windsor" lead us naturally to the consideration of those at Hampton Court, scarcely less celebrated, and, from their vicinity to the metropolis, perhaps more generally known and admired; and these bring down our illustrations of the Court Beauties of England to the end of William the Third's reign. 66 William had great and good qualities, but he was deficient in those amiable feelings and social accomplishments which render greatness attractive. He courted fame, but none of her ministers," and even in his youngest and gayest years, seems to have been as devoid of feeling for beauty as of taste in the fine arts. The Hampton Court Beauties, like the Windsor Beauties, owe their existence to a woman's pride in her own sex, not to the gallantry of ours. The thought was first suggested by Queen Mary, and its execution was begun during one of the King's absences. Walpole relates, on the authority of an old lady of the Court, that no parts of the Queen's conduct, political or domestic, ever rendered her so unpopular as these unfortunate Beauties :—all the fair ones who were excluded thinking themselves aggrieved by the preference shown to a few; and fathers, husbands, brothers, and lovers, making common cause with these injured beauties. Lady Dorchester, the witty and profligate daughter of the greatest wit and profligate in Charles's court, strongly advised the Queen against the idea of forming a gallery of Beauties. "Madam," said she, "if the King was to ask for the portraits of all the wits of his court, would not the rest think he called them fools?" Mary, however, who luckily was gifted with a portion of her father's obstinacy, persisted in her resolution. Sir Godfrey Kneller was appointed to execute it; and the pictures, when finished, were hung in the palace at Hampton, then the favourite residence of the monarch, and in the room he usually inhabited. Mary subsequently placed the large picture of the King by Kneller, and her own portrait by Wissing, in the same apartment. The Beauties of Hampton Court are all full-lengths, with the exception of Queen Mary. As paintings, they are decidedly inferior to the Windsor Beauties, and, with due deference to the virtues of the ladies they represent, are certainly inferior to them in the interest and beauty of the subjects. They have suffered too so much from the alternate dampness and dryness of their situation, that it would be invidious to criticise the colouring as the fault of the artist; there is a chalkiness in the flesh and a general rawness in the tints which will not bear a comparison with the delicacy of Lely's carnations, nor even with many of Kneller's other works which have been better preserved. "Alas! how little from the grave we claim: Thou but preserv'st a face, and I, a name”.— exclaimed Pope to his friend and pity it is, that of several of the beautiful women we are now about considering, the face and the name are all that remain to us. QUEEN MARY, eldest daughter of James the Second, by Anne Hyde: half length, by Wissing. As this picture represents Mary without any of the paraphernalia of royalty, and merely in the usual dress of a lady of her time, we shall consider her accordingly in her most interesting and distinguished character as a woman, and not as a queen. Mary was married young to a man destitute of every quality which could recommend him to the sex; he was feeble in temperament, ungraceful in his person, and ungracious in his manners. Whatever we may owe as a nation to the public virtue or ambition of William, it is certain that the different notices of him scattered through the pages of his panegyrist Burnet, when brought together, make up a most unamiable and revolting private character. "He had been much neglected in his education." "He spoke little." "He put on some appearance of application, but he hated business of all sorts." "Yet he hated talking, and all sports except hunting, more."t "He could never bring himself to comply with the temper of the English, his coldness and slowness being very contrary to the genius of the nation." "His behaviour was solemn and serious, seldom cheerful, and but with a few." "He spoke little and very slowly, and most commonly with a disgusting dryness, which was his character at all times except on the day of battle." "His designs were great and good, Sir Charles Sedley. On him were written the celebrated lines,-very applicable to a great poet of the present day-beginning Sedley has that prevailing, gentle art, &c." + Burnet's History, vol. ii. p. 313. Sept.-VOL. XVII. NO. LXIX. T but he did not descend to make himself or his notions acceptable to his people." "This reservedness grew upon him, so that it disgusted all those who served him, but he had observed the errors of too much talking rather than those of too cold a silence." "He was without passion." "In his deportment towards all about him, he seemed to make little distinction between the good and the bad, and those who served him well or those who served him ill."*"His friends had advised him to be more visible, open, and communicative, and he promised he would set about it, but he went on in his former way," &c. He was not utterly incapable of friendship or affection; but he had no flow either of thought or feeling, and of the sweetening charities of domestic life he knew nothing. His greatest favourites, the Earl of Portland and Lord Albemarle, were never allowed to give their advice unasked, or to speak unspoken to; in short, William in public life, the asserter of our national liberties, and the warlike hero of Namur and the Boyne; and William, in the recesses of his palace, coldly repelling his wife, rating his menials, or devouring a whole dish of green peas from his sister-in-law, while she looked and longed in vain, ‡ seem scarcely compatible characters. It is the consistent and undeviating propriety of Mary's conduct to this unamiable and ungracious being, which raises her character in our estimation, and throws round her a strong interest, a charm she could not otherwise have possessed. She was the most obedient and submissive of wives to a husband, who owed his throne to her. She was often known to prepare the king's breakfast with her own hands. Her sweetness stood between him and the national dislike, so that a part of his unpopularity fell on her. That she loved the king, or derived much pleasure from his society, seems scarcely possible: "Queen Mary," says the Duchess of Marlborough, "soon grew weary of those who did not talk much;" for her own disposition, like that of her sister Anne, was by nature still, though cheerful, and therefore fond of the excitement which flowed from the minds of others. But though she was dissatisfied at the cold temper of the King, she had a power over herself to conceal or suppress it. She was gifted with the quiet enduring fortitude, which distinguished most of her unfortunate family, and which was founded in insensibility, rather than in magnanimity. Under the same circumstances, a woman of warm affections and high spirit would have struggled with her destiny, before she submitted to it; she would have resisted and repined, have been wretched, and despaired, though at last resigned: but Mary had no passions to contend with, no strong affections of any kind, and she lived discontented, rather than unhappy. "Elle pouvait se passer de bonheur," though the want of it seems to have left her nothing to Burnet, Vol. iii. p. 335. "His passions were seldom felt but by his inferior servants."-Burnet, vol. iii. p. 338. § On their being called to the throne, she promised that he should always bear rule-saying that she asked him only to obey the command of "Husbands love your wives," as she should do that of "Wives be obedient to your husbands." In one of her letters to him, while in Ireland, she concludes touchingly, "All I ask of you is, that you would love me." regret in life. On her death-bed, "her resignation," says Burnet, "went farther than submission-she seemed to desire death, rather than life:" she refused to see the King, though he earnestly requested it, saying she had "written all her mind to him." She died in 1694, at the age of thirty-three. With regard to Mary's conduct towards her father and sister, it appears so inexcusable, that Burnet, with all his admiration of her excellencies, rather apologises for her than attempts to defend her. On her first arrival at Whitehall, after the deposition of James the Second, her unconcerned gaiety was so like exultation, that even the Bishop was scandalised :-"I confess," he says, "I was one of those who censured this in my thoughts. I thought a little more seriousness had done as well when she came into her father's palace, and was to be set on his throne the next day." The Queen afterwards said, that she had been commanded by the Prince, her husband, to "put on a cheerfulness, and act a part not natural to her," for fear of disgusting their adherents," and that none knew what she suffered;" and she might have added, none believed. In this instance, as in many others, dissimulation, if it was such, defeated its own purpose; for her conduct on the occasion exposed her to general indignation, and for a time turned every heart against her.+ Neither does it seem necessary that she should have carried her dissimulation even into her own bed-chamber. “I was one of those," says the Duchess of Marlborough, (who, though passionate and prejudiced, is tolerably good authority for facts) "who had the honour to wait upon the Queen to her own apartment. She ran about it, looking into every closet and conveniency, and turning up the quilts upon the bed, as people do when they come into an inn, and with no other sort of concern in her appearance, but such as they express; and," adds the Duchess, with naiveté, "if she felt no tenderness, I thought she ought at least to have looked grave, or even pensively sad, at so melancholy a reverse of her father's fortune." Such hypocrisy would at least have served her cause better. We have before observed, that the portrait of William the Third is at one end of the Gallery of Beauties, near that of the Queen. The manner in which the pictures are hung is a good exemplification of their domestic arrangements. The portrait of Mary, a small unpretending half-length, is modestly suspended by the side of her husband, whose majesty covers one end of the room and half an acre of canvass. though, as poets write, And "Heaven itself to Kneller's hand decreed To fix great Nassau on the bounding steed," Heaven seems to have left him there, and denied its inspiration to his * We are reminded here of one of Mary's collateral ancestors, Marguerite d'Ecosse, “La gentille Marguerite," the unhappy wife of Louis the Eleventh. Beautiful, accomplished, and in the very spring of life, she died a victim to the detestable character of her husband. When one of her attendants spoke of hope and life, the Queen, turning from her with an expression of deep disgust, exclaimed with a last effort, "Fi de la vie! ne m'en parlez plus !"—and expired. + Madame de Sevigné calls her "La seconde Tullie," and there is extant a furious satire, attributed to Dryden, entitled "Tarquin and Tullia." So strong was partyfeeling at that time, that one clergyman preached a sermon on her funeral, from the text in the Book of Kings, "Come now let us take this accursed woman and bury her, for she is a king's daughter." "Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough," p. 25. |