According to her own story, Madame de Genlis was not at all a favorite with the members of this little court. Still, satis

duchess, she kept as much as possible to her own rooms, and busied herself with her books and her music. Then the Opera-house was accessible by a covered way from the Palais Royal, and she constantly attended the rehearsals of Gluck's operas, which Gluck was conducting himself. Twice a week, too, he made a point of coming to her rooms and hearing her sing and play the harp. She never suffered anything to interfere with her music, and practised every evening for two hours.

and scoffs at her pretensions to being an author and a bel esprit, declaring that she was "so ignorant all round, she could never have written her plays without Le-fied with the approbation of the duke and fébvre's help," and that “the few clever bits in them were stolen straight from Marivaux." "I was her dupe in nothing," she continues. "When you once have the key to an artificial character, it is easily understood, because there is not a movement but what is calculated." These remarks, deliberately written down to be read to the friends of the person who is the object of them, and afterwards to be printed, are not genial; but there is worse behind. Seventeen years later, à propos of the marriage of her own daughter Pulchérie, she calmly says that it is universally reported that Madame de Montesson, then a widow, was in love with the bridegroom, M. de Valence, but that she (Madame de Genlis) had reassured herself by arguing that, even if M. de Valence had been the lover of a woman much older than himself, his marriage with a pretty girl of seventeen would put an end to all that; and as for the dot of two hundred thousand francs which she permitted a friend to beg from Madame de Montesson, she contents herself with observing that in reality it is not Pulchérie to whom it is given, but M. de Valence himself.

Madame de Genlis would have been very much surprised if she had been told that in all this she appears infinitely more culpable than the person she is abusing; yet this is probably the impression that will be left on the minds of most of her readers. She was twenty-four when she was nominated lady-in-waiting to the Duchesse de Chartres, afterwards Duchesse d'Orléans, with a salary of four thousand francs, while her husband was made captain of the Guards, with six thousand. At that time the society of the Palais Royal was the most brilliant and witty in Paris. Ill-breeding, or any flagrant scandal, shut the door inexorably; but neither a spotless life nor a shining gift of any sort was indispensable. As long as people had good manners, and were rich and pretty, they might find their way in; and dévotes, prudes, and coquettes of all kinds were to be met with on opera nights, when any one who had once been presented might drop in to supper. On the other evenings of the week the circle was select. The ladies sat round a table with their embroidery frames, or heaps of gold fringes to "drizzle" or unravel; and the gentlemen sat behind and joined in the conversation.

When the twin princesses were eleven months old (one of them died at five years) they were handed over entirely to her care, and she retired with them to a house not far from the Palais Royal, called BelleChasse. Whatsoever Madame de Genlis's faults may have been, she was not lacking in energy. She regulated the minutest details of the establishment, so as to conduct it on economical principles; she calculated the amount of every kind of food necessary for the day's consumption, and even knew the current prices of the market. While the children were young, she had more time to devote to her literary work, and published her first volume of the "Théâtre d'Education," which made "a perfect rage" for her, and sorely excited Madame de Montesson's jealousy. In our judgment the enthusiasm seems somewhat misplaced. "The Death of Adam," "The Return of Tobias,” “ Agar in the Desert" (a comedy), and similar works, gain nothing by being transplanted from their original setting and converted into dramas. The other volumes are secular; but, although the actors express themselves in a natural way, they are moral stories rather than plays, and, as such, not likely to attract children.

At this time Madame de Genlis was thirty-one, and, in compliance with a vow, had left off rouge at the very age when most women would feel inclined to take to it. Her life at Belle-Chasse for the next thirteen or fourteen years was very quiet; but she declares it was the happiest time of her existence. She never went into society at all; but she saw her immediate friends and relations every evening for two hours, and the general public once a week, from 6 till 9.30. She soon had a perfect little academy; for her mother (now a widow for the second time) and her two daughters lived with her, while the English nurses of the princesses were

supplemented, when the children were selves. To be properly carried out, too, it five, by the arrival from England of Pa- requires a great deal of money, a large mela. Every one knows that Pamela was house, and an absolute isolation and selfbelieved to be the child of Philippe Ega- sacrifice on the part of the teachers. Prilité and Madame de Genlis herself, and vate people would have to think of some this belief is strengthened by the elaborate easier (and cheaper) method of teaching and highly improbable account given by their children history than hanging their Madame de Genlis of the baby's parent- rooms with tapestries representing charage, and still more emphatically by the acters and events, or with a series of welcome subsequently bestowed on the instructive pictures painted in gouache. girl by her mother-in-law, the Duchess of They would not be always able to afford Leinster. Whosoever she was, Pamela several personal attendants of every nawas certainly a fascinating little person, tionality, nor would most boys enjoy havhorribly careless over her lessons, and ing a German valet to accompany them in gaining the hearts of all who knew her. their walks. The games in the gardenBy and by the circle was joined by two games of adventures and shipwrecks relations of Madame de Genlis, her cousin would be very popular; and so would the Henriette de Sercey, and her brother's portable theatre, though we could have orphan boy; and then came the supreme wished them something more lively to moment of her life, when she was requested act than the "Théâtre d'Education," of by the duke to take the entire charge of which new volumes were always appearhis three sons, the eldest of whom, the ing. If they "talked in German," they Duc de Valois, was only eight. "dined in English" and "supped in ItalThe appointment of a woman as gov-ian;" and at odd moments they studied ernor naturally excited a good deal of botany and chemistry and painted in mirth at Versailles; but in the end society gouache. When in Paris, they all worked was satisfied. It must be said that Ma- at trades; and on one occasion there was dame de Genlis did not spare herself. an exhibition at the Louvre of the Russia She exercised her functions wisely and leather cases, baskets, tools, wardrobes, well; exercised them, too, without accept- and other things, entirely made by the ing a penny more of salary than what she Orleans children. In their leisure hours received for Mille. d'Orléans. She had they visited museums, galleries, and manabsolute control over their teachers, and ufactories, and any other places worth kept a journal of all their lessons and seeing. They were even brought up hours, which she arranged with the utmost from St. Leu to Paris, by their enthusicare. The princes got up at 7 A.M. They astic governess, in order that they might slept at the Palais Royal, and were taught watch from Beaumarchais' Garden the Latin and sums till eleven. They were crowd assembling for the taking of the then taken to Belle-Chasse, and at two Bastille. they all dined. After dinner the tutors left, and she undertook the children herself till nine, when the tutors returned, and after supper the boys were conveyed home to bed. These seem long hours; but in the country, where they all passed eight months of the year, they may have been rather shorter. Some of the lessons

history, literature, and mythology Madame de Genlis gave herself. Her first experience of teaching M. de Valois can hardly be called encouraging. She turned round in the midst of recounting some exciting deed of his ancestors, to find him yawning and stretching himself, and finally throwing himself at full length on the sofa with his feet on the table! Punishment promptly followed, and the offence was never repeated.

Her plan of education (practically the same as that described in "Adèle et Théodore") seems very sensible; only, the children were hardly left enough to them

Amidst all this practical teaching, the claims which society would have upon them were not forgotten. Dancing was taught them by Dauberval of the Opera; every Saturday they "received" at BelleChasse; and once a week, after the eldest was twelve, they were taken to the Français. They learned to swim. They were taught to bleed, and to dress wounds; in acquiring which arts they practised on the poor at the Hôtel Dieu. It is possible they were not more clumsy than many medical students.

It is amazing that with all this Madame de Genlis managed to give up so much time to her writing; but she produced many books, most of which were on the education of her pupils. Of these "Adèle et Théodore " (highly commended by Grimm for its grace, style, and sense. though most of the ideas had been anricipated by Locke and Rousseau) is the best known, and even now is not at all

was the brief engagement of Sheridan to Pamela.

If Madame de Genlis is to be believed, Pamela owed neither of her two proposals to her own attractions, but solely to her resemblance to the late Mrs. Sheridan, with whom Lord Edward Fitzgerald, as well as Sheridan himself, was violently in love. Her betrothal to Sheridan, now a man of forty-seven, lasted hardly more than a fortnight. She returned to France, whither he was to follow her as soon as he had arranged some "pressing affairs." They speedily forgot each other; and in a few weeks Pamela was the wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald.

bad reading. It rivalled, almost successfully, Madame d'Epinay's "Conversations d'Emilie" for the Monthyon Prix d'Utilité given by the Academy. Madame d'Epinay won the prize, to her rival's astonishment and disgust; but the defeated one consoles herself with thinking that it is a piece of revenge on the part of the philosophers for the stress which she has laid on religion. In a little story called "Les Deux Réputations" (Veillées du Château) she censures the judgment, and remarks that, "in spite of his brilliancy, Voltaire is really mediocre in everything, producing nothing but platitudes, and writing about all subjects in the same way." Voltaire apart, it must be owned that Madame For nine years Madame de Genlis, d'Epinay's little book has certainly the proscribed as an émigrée, wandered from advantage in simplicity, originality, and country to country, before she was alhumor qualities not in the least char-lowed to return to France. But the years acteristic of Madame de Genlis. The of the Revolution had done more than affair occasioned a good deal of talk at sweep away obnoxious institutions and the time, and called forth some amusing comments from the Duchesse de Grammont, sister of the Duc de Choiseul. "I am charmed at the result of the competition," she writes to a friend, "for I am certain that Madame de Genlis will die of disappointment, which will be delightful, or she will revenge herself by a satire on the philosophers, which also will be diverting; and, finally, I am enchanted that every one shall see what I have long been convinced of, that the Academy is in its dotage." The duchess was rigidly impartial.

As the years wear on, the Duchess of Orleans grows colder and colder towards her; a change which Madame de Genlis professes to attribute to political causes, though other reasons may occur to the reader. At last, in 1790, she sends in her resignation. The duke declines to accept it, and a peace is patched up. An absence of a few weeks proves, Madame de Genlis says, that Mademoiselle could not do without her; she is reinstated in her position, and in October, 1791, is hastily sent with her pupil and Pamela to England. This was Madame de Genlis's second visit; and on the first occasion, some years earlier, she had made the acquaintance of Burke, Walpole, Sheridan, and many others, whose friendship she was glad to claim. We must not linger over the many interesting episodes of their English life and country-house visits to the "castle" of le chevalier Hoare and to the lovely conservatories of le chevalier Bunbury. Every one treated the fugitives with much kindness; but the most romantic event of their English sojourn

the buildings that were their outward sign; it had absolutely changed men's ways and manners, and the Paris of the first consul was no more the Paris of the old régime that she knew so well. Napoleon was always very kind to her - he allotted her rooms in the Arsenal, and kept up a correspondence with her; but he could not bring back the birds to the nests of last year. The very language had changed its meaning, and the polite, exaggerated phrases of yore had become more familiar and brutal. Hours were later too. Theatres were not over till eleven, and, if people occasionally gave suppers after, the old gaiety was absent. Ceremony had taken the place of ease and courtesy. At the petits soupers which formed the joy of the Paris où l'on s'amusait, the ladies had been all on an equal footing; a duchess had no precedence over a queen of finance, and would have been thought illmannered had she accepted any. When the maître d'hôtel observed that "Madame est servie," the lady next the door walked down first, and the others followed and placed themselves where they chose. On entering, a bow to the hostess was thought sufficient, and the visitor was expected to watch his opportunity and steal away when it suited him, without drawing public attention to his movements.

In 1802 all this was altered. The mistress of the house was bombarded with compliments by the newly arrived guest, on his entrance and on his exit; due consideration was given to rank and importance; and gesticulation and raised voices took the place of the well-bred calm that formerly reigned in salons. The purely

flat, and her inevitable talk of herself and FIVE VOICES FROM AN OLD MUSIC-BOOK.

"Nothing," and their searching look the door, you fool?" cried the squire; a into the father's restless eyes filled him with a keener reproach even than their cruel answer.