lurking suspicion arose that the learned professor wait for the last act, having seen the end from the anticipated trouble in the camp, and had had his eyes opened to the possibility that Davis was about to supplant Swedenborg in the estimation of the lovers of the vague and mysterious. The idea was unpleasant because of the inconsistency it implied in the professor, to say nothing of the inferior motives which it necessarily supposed. But there stood the glaring contradiction of the endorsement and repudiation, and it was difficult to put any other construction upon the eccentric or reverse movement which the last publication displayed.

beginning. But why not issue a new edition of Swedenborg's writings corrected by the author? Assuming the truth of what has been asserted by the clairvoyants, there can be no difficulty in the matter. Mr. Swedenborg, having opened a communication with the denizens of this world, and so unequivocally expressed his dissatisfaction with previous editions of his works can, without let or hindrance, inform his friends what emendations and corrections he desires, and would doubtless correct the proofs as they went through the press. All that the public would require would be indisputable evidence that the old dreamer himself actually had a hand in the business, and the sale of the edition would then be unlimited.

"But why not go a little further? There are many disputed passages in even the best edition of Shakspeare's writings; Pollock's Course of Time, lofty as are many of its conceptions, is nevertheless rather crude and faulty in some passages, and lacks generally euphoniousness and finish; the Iliad wants Homer's autograph, and even Virgil's Georgics would be none the worse for the author's latest emendations; possibly Addison himself would like

"Since then, however, in conversation with an intelligent gentleman, we have learned a curious fact which throws some light upon the matter, and reveals some sharp practice on the part of some of the disciples of the clairvoyant school who profess to be accepted visitors at the chambers of the focal light.' They are plotting to overthrow the horse and his rider-Swedenborg and his ardent follower. It is now contended that a clairvoyant, resident we understand in the city of Brooklyn, has had interviews with the spirit of Emanuel Swedenborg and that that gentleman-we beg pardon, gentle-spirithas declared that he is very much dissatisfied with the works he left behind, that they are altogether to give the finishing touch to some of his essays, imperfect, and that could he again handle a goosequill he would remodel them, making them more after the fashion of recent revelations. Swedenborg's particular friend in New York has taken the alarm and the 'revelations' are declared to be far from so wondrously perfect as they were at first held to be.

and Dr. Johnson would substitute an autobiography for Boswell's gossiping reminiscences. We expect shortly to see announced a new edition of Smollett's History of England revised and brought down to the present time by the author.'

"Seriously, we put this and that together and the conclusion is almost unavoidable, that Davis is trying to supplant Swedenborg and that Swedenborg's friends are afraid he will succeed.”

POETRY.-The Wedding Day, 494-Cry from the Condemned Cell, 515.
SCRAPS.-Longevity of Women; Mr. Brooke of Borneo, 494-Punch on Scarcity of Money,
510-Present to the Prince of Wales, 523-Coats of Arms; Time; East Indian Bishops, 526
-Gold and Silver, 527.

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LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 188.-18 DECEMBER, 1847.

From the Dublin University Magazine.
MADEMOISELLE LENORMAND.

queen, then in the Temple prison, which proved fruitless from the impossibility of inducing Marie Antoinette to embrace any opportunity of escape, which was to involve a separation from her children. Lenormand's connection with this enterprise led to her own arrest, and she found herself an inmate of the prison of the Petite Force, from which she was afterwards removed to that of the Luxembourg. Although at this time the "reign of terror" had already begun its course of blood, and the citizen once breathed on by suspicion— especially of royalist plotting-had little to do but prepare for the guillotine, Lenormand was no way frightened by this turn in her affairs, her astrolog

MANY of our readers, no doubt, are familiar with the name of the extraordinary person, who, since the year 1789, has practised the arts of chiromancy and astrology in the French capital, and who, in the most sceptical epoch, and among the most sceptical people of modern times, has been able to maintain, for more than half a century, the reputation of an almost infallible interpreter of the decrees of fate. Some anecdotes of this Pythoness of our own days, derived from sources which we have reason to believe authentic, are offered in the following pages to those who take interest in such things. Of what may seem to verge on the mar-ical calculations assuring her, as she said, that vellous, in the circumstances we have to relate, it is not our task to supply the rationale: we leave that as a problem for our psychological friends, to whose ken there is no mist impenetrable, no millstone opaque. He that can fathom animal magnetism may try his plummet in the mysteries of the palm and of the stars: we go not into matters that would take us out of our depth.

Mademoiselle Lenormand was born in 1772, at Alençon, in Normandy, and received her education in the Benedictine convent of that place, at the royal expense. The good nuns were far from dreaming what an embryo sorceress their cloister nursed in its bosom; though, by her own account, there must have been something about her, even then, unlike other children, and calculated to give the impression that the little king's-charity-scholar was not altogether "canny." "She remembers,' writes one who was much in communication with her between the years 1811 and 1813, "having a singular power of observation and imagination since she was seven years old, and an expression she often uses, in reference to that period of her life, is-I was a waking somnambulist." At an early age, Paris became her abode, and here we find her, in her seventeenth year, already embarked in the profession of a fortune-teller, and applying herself with ardor to the study of astronomy and algebra, the knowledge of which she believed indispensable to the perfection she aimed at in the divinatory art. She rose rapidly into note. The persons who came, led perhaps more by curiosity than by credulity, to test her prophetic powers, were confounded by the acquaintance she displayed with the most secret details of their past history, and learned to place a reluctant confidence, at variance with all their habits of thought, in her predictions of the future. Meanwhile, the revolution proceeded, and it was the lot of our Pythoness to become involved in one of the countless plots which the distracted times were hourly bringing forth. It was a project for the liberation of the VOL. XV. 34

CLXXXVIII.

LIVING AGE.

her life was safe, and that her imprisonment would not be of long duration. The result showed that, unlike the augur-tribe in general, she had read the book of fate as truly for herself as she did for others. Robespierre's fall found her still among the unguillotined, and placed her at liberty with the remnant that were in the same case.

Her sojourn in the Luxembourg, however, had brought her into contact, among others, with Josephine Beauharnais. Josephine had once had her fortune told, by an Obi woman in the West Indies; she now got it done a second time by Lenormand,. and had the satisfaction to find that the black and the white sibyls spelled her destinies alike. We say the satisfaction, because it really was satisfac-tory, to one for whose neck the guillotine's tooth, so to speak, was on edge, to hear from two dif-ferent fortune-tellers, so widely apart both in geography and complexion, that years of life and greatness were before her. The agreement could not but dispose to belief, and it is not rash to surmise that Josephine's mind was all the easier, for her conference with the Norman prophetess, during the term that yet intervened, before the auspicious event that restored both to freedom. This event itself was no slight confirmation of Lenormand's credit; and when Josephine, about two years after, married Napoleon Bonaparte, and perhaps discovered in him the aspirings of that ambition which boded her the fulfilment of those more dazzling promises of her horoscope that stood yet unredeemed, she did not fail to talk to him of the gifted mortal who had shared her captivity, and by whom such great things had been prognosticated for her, and, by the plainest implication, for him as her husband. Few men were more superstitious at heart than he to whom these conjugal revelations were made: he saw Lenormand, and it is said, (though we fear on doubtful authority,) that she foretold him the successive stages of the career he was destined to run-his elevation to the summit of power, his fall, and his

a mysterious art. She had broad, flat features, and wore a black silk morning dress, and a cap with a deep border, that completely covered the hair. She beckoned us into the cabinet, seated herself in a high arm-chair, before a large table, on which lay as

tions, and pointed to two lower seats, which we took possession of. She now looked good-humoredly it; she said nothing further on the subject, and at us, and told us we were disguised. We confessed when taking leave, we named ourselves of our own accord."

death in exile. What measure of faith may have | and the expression of her countenance had the kind been yielded by Napoleon to these vaticinations, of solemnity one expects to find in the professor of (supposing they were ever uttered,) we have of course no means of knowing; but, from the time of his attaining the imperial dignity, it is certain that Lenormand became an object of suspicion to him, the effects of which she often found trouble-tronomical charts and papers covered with calcula some enough. Perhaps the emperor thought that she who had predicted his overthrow would not scruple to use means to compass it. Be that as it may, a jealous watchfulness was now exercised, not only towards the prophetess herself, but towards those who came to consult her; more than once she was arrested, and had to undergo a rigorWe must here interrupt the countess to say, ous interrogatory at the palais de justice. On that we regret she should have thought it necesone of these occasions a remarkable expression sary to maintain an incognito with us, which she fell from her it was on the 11th December, 1809, was so obliging as to drop towards Mlle. Lenorwhen, being pressed to explain an obscure answer mand. Countesses that have anything out of the she had just given to some question which had common way to tell, should eschew the anonybeen addressed to her, she said, "My answer is a mous, lest readers of an incredulous turn of mind problem, the solution of which I reserve till the should be led to suspect that they are no countesses 31st of March, 1814." What the question was, at all. Letters of the alphabet are bad vouchers to which this reply was given, does not appear, for a tough story; even the newspapers will not but we hardly need to remind the reader, that, insert your account of a man's nose bitten off by eight days before, the fifth anniversary of Napo- an oyster," unless you send your real name and leon's coronation had been celebrated with a splen- address. "Q. Z." will not do. And what better dor enhanced by the presence of five of his royal is "N. N." For anything one knows, it may vassals, the kings of Saxony, Westphalia, Wir- stand for Nobody, of Nowhere. temberg, Holland and Naples; and that on the day named by Lenormand for the solution of her "problem"-the allies entered Paris.

66

:

And now to our promised anecdotes, the first of which we find in a communication addressed to our friend Doctor Justinus Kerner, by a lady who subscribes herself "Countess N. N.," and who is the same we referred to a while ago, as having had a great deal to do with the Pythoness, between the years 1811 and 1813. Let us premise that the countess' real name is known to the doctor, though she chooses to be only N. N. to the public:"On the 5th May, 1811, the Duchess of Courland and I, having disguised ourselves as citizens' wives of Paris, drove to the entrance of the Faubourg St. Germain, and leaving our carriage there, took a fiacre, and proceeded to Mlle. Lenormand's in the Rue Tournon. After we had rung and knocked several times, a young girl appeared, and told us we could not see Mademoiselle L., as she was at that moment engaged, and that we must either come another time, or wait till she was at leisure to receive

us.

We chose the latter, and were shown into a room, in which books, prints, paintings, stuffed animals, musical and other instruments, bottles with snakes and lizards in spirits, wax fruits, artificial flowers, and a medley of other articles, covered the walls, the tables, and the floor, leaving scarcely an unoccupied spot for the eye to rest on. It was fully two hours before any one came near us, during which time we heard the house-door, as well as that of the adjoining cabinet, open and shut repeatedly. At last, when our patience was almost worn out, the door of the room we were in was opened, and a figure, of a height and breadth that surprised us, made its appearance. It was Mlle. Lenormand. There was undeniably something imposing in the picture she presented: her bulk nearly filled the door; her air was marked by a stately composure,

66

As our countess, however, has not thought proper to name herself, it is well that she has not practised the same reserve in relation to the Duchess of Courland. The duchess is a good guarantee for the authenticity of the countess; for this Duchess of Courland is a real personage, Anna Charlotte Dorothea by name, a born Von Medem, and third wife and relict of Peter, last Duke of Courland, who died the 13th of January, 1800. She was born the 8th of February, 1761, (consequently had entered her fifty-first year but three months before the "lark" we find her engaged in,) and was married the 6th of November, 1779. She lives (if she has not died since 1822) on her estate of Loebichau, in the principality of Altenburg, and has a jointure of sixty thousand florins (or five thousand pounds sterling) a year. youngest daughter, Dorothea, was married, in 1809, to the nephew of Prince Talleyrand. The reader sees that in the Duchess of Courland we have got a tangible fact, taken in connection with which, the Countess N. N. becomes at least a fair probability; and now let the fair probability proceed with her narrative, secure from further interruption :—

Her

"In walking, whether do you like best to go wear, or wear for the first time at a very advanced up hill or down?'

"A singular destiny! You will see more high mountains than you think-will ascend more than you will wish to do. One day, and that in 1813, during the war, you will have to fly; your people will be ill-used and made prisoners; you yourself also will be carried away one morning, at one o'clock, by men with long beards, and by men wearing chains and coats of mail, who will require of you a breach of fidelity towards him who will die So far Countess N. N., of whose unsatisfactory on the rock. Three state prisoners will owe their lives to your intercession. In Venice, a poet, whom way of telling her story we must here again comyou have never seen, and never will see, will feel plain. After giving us the prophecy word for himself impelled to make it a request to you, that word, she ought to have given the fulfilment, event after his death you will pray for him, as often as for event, told us all about the "high mountains,' you enjoy the view of anything preeminently beau- (which we have to guess were the Alps and Aptiful in nature. Your life will be spent in courts, ennines,) the "men with long beards," (Cossacks, because the choice of your heart is solitude; this is of course,) the others wearing "chains and coats the contradiction that presides over your earthly ex- of mail," and explained what "breach of fidelity" istence. Your first long journey will be from Germany to Italy, whither you will go at the instance they required of her, towards "him who was to of a sovereign; and you will be invested with an die upon the rock"-in whom there is no very order, the decoration of which you will either never great difficulty in recognizing Napoleon. She

might have done worse, too, than let us know who were the "three prisoners of state that owed their lives to her intercession."

florins was conferred upon him at his retirement; and, taking up his abode once more in Heidelberg, he devoted the rest of his days to the "cultivation of the sciences." In this occupation-a considerably pleasanter one, we reckon, than liquidating the national debt-he was engaged up to the year 1838, and may, for anything we know, be engaged at the present writing.

So much to advise the reader who President Malchus properly is, or was, and now to his account of what passed between himself and Mlle. Lenormand.

This

"The reason is," replied Morio, "that my wife is in an agony of dread if I remain out of her sight a moment after the time she has reckoned to see me."

Our next contribution is from a personage every way more authentic and responsible than the Countess N. N., namely, the President Von Malchus, who, about forty years ago, played a somewhat considerable part in European affairs. He was born in 1770, at Mannheim, where his father held some subordinate appointment in the household of the Duke of Deux-ponts. The duke, discovering indications of talent in the boy, took care that he should enjoy every advantage of education; he He had heard, he tells us, of the far-famed was placed in the Gymnasium of Mannheim in his divineress long before he saw, or supposed that he fifteenth year, and, after two years of preparatory ever would see her, and the way in which her study, proceeded to the University of Heidelberg, name came to his ears was this. There was a from which he afterwards removed to that of certain Count Morio in the Westphalian service, a Göttingen. In 1790, he exchanged an academic Frenchman by birth, whom King Jerome had aplife for one devoted to diplomacy, being made pri- pointed marshal of the palace, and in concert with vate secretary to the Count of Westphalia, minister whom the finance-minister had received orders to of state to the Elector of Mayence. After this he remodel the royal household, with a view to its occupied various posts of gradually increasing im- being placed on a more economical footing. portance, till 1803, when he was entrusted with a business necessitated frequent and prolonged interhigh "cameral" appointment by the king of Prus-views between the two officials, which took place sia. When the kingdom of Westphalia was at the house of Malchus; and at these, Morio, erected, in 1807, he was called to give King after the lapse of about an hour, generally became Jerome (the most brainless of the Bonaparte fam- uneasy, and showed a marked anxiety to terminate ily) the aid of his financial abilities, first as a the sitting and to get home. This impatience was member of the council of state, and afterwards as quite inexplicable to his colleague, who one day director-general of imposts, and liquidator-general asked him the reason of it. of the national debt; the last-mentioned office, however, after a short tenure, he gave up, and we rather think the office itself was abolished, as calculated to create a popular delusion-to say nothing of its being a sinecure. During the next three years he was employed in various missions, (to Berlin, Hanover, Paris, &c.,) the object of which, it is our impression, was generally something connected with money matters, as the bent of his genius was decidedly that way. From this period the rise of his fortunes was rapid. In 1811, he was named minister of finance; in 1812, of war; and in 1813, of the interior; simultaneously with this last charge, he received the title of Count Marienrode, Jerome probably thinking that such an accumulation of employments (leaving no one domestic or foreign affair of the kingdom that Malchus was not to manage) would be too much for the head of a simple commoner. After the dissolution of the Westphalian monarchy, Malchus took up his residence at Heidelberg, where for some time his position was by no means an enviable one, in consequence of the violent attacks, both in reference to his administration and his personal character, of which he found himself the object. However, he showed his assailants a bold front, and published a memoir, in which the charges against him were ably combated. He lived some years in privacy, and with straitened means; at length, in 1817, he entered the service of the king of Wirtemberg, who placed him at the head of his old department of finance. From what causes we are not informed, he held his appointment little more than a year. A pension of four thousand

"And why?" inquired Malchus.

Morio then related that his wife, before he met with her, had had her nativity cast by Mlle. Lenormand, who, among other things, had told her that she would be married three times. Her first husband would be a man between whom and herself no acquaintance at that time existed; the marriage would be a very advantageous one, and put her in possession of all she could reasonably wish for, but when blest with the fulfilment of her highest wish-to be in the way of becoming a mother -she would, soon after a great fire, receive in her house a visitor of great distinction, and, not long after, lose her husband by a violent death.

Married a second time, not so brilliantly but still very well, she would return to her native country, (she was a Creole,) where she would in a short time lose her second husband, and marry a third, who would survive her.

After this explanation, Malchus seems to have indulged, as far as it was possible, the wish of his fellow-laborer to shorten the hours of business. One day, however, he found it necessary to continue the sitting considerably beyond the usual time, when Morio, unable to contain his anxiety, at last insisted upon breaking off, and said, “Come, monsieur le ministre, do me the honor to accompany me home; you shall see for yourself the state of terror in which my absence places my wife, and you will never again blame my reluc