was Bartolomeo Torigiano; but no one ever saw him paint. She also says, that the Cavaliere Fidenza,* who died lately at Rome, has deceived the most learned cognoscenti with imitations of Salvator. Some of which have found their way into this country. Passeri represents him as talking latterly much of Paul Veronese, and fond of his Venetian school, and having no great leaning towards Raffaelle, as hard and dry. He well describes himself in his letters, as all spirit and fire. His taste for Alpine solitude is well expressed in his ninth letter, and his impetuous and indignant spirit in the thirteenth. The eighteenth, exhibiting his sad decline, is quite heartrending.-Found on my return to my house, J** jun. and W**t. Showed them some scarce prints. They said my Hobbima was surpassed only by one of Watson Taylor's; and my Claude was quite unrivalled for effect. Finished a priced catalogue of my pictures, exceeding 1,5007. independant of the pictures I had from my father, and those bequeathed me by Lord Chedworth. May 3. Looked over a collection of Etchings by Mrs. Dawson Turner. Johnson's head, from a drawing by Oz. Humphry (without a wig), though preserving all the features, gives him a character of expression quite different from any representation I have ever seen of him,-forcible and dignified, and bearing the genuine impress of a mighty mind. May 29. Signor T** came with Mr. Hare to see my pictures. An acute judge. The following is his judgment. The Sir Antonio More very Titianic. Dr. Silvius fine. The woman's head excellent, but neither by Jansen, nor Vansomer. Enraptured with the Rembrandt in the breakfast room, an unquestionable and magnificent specimen. The Interior capital. Puzzled with" the Piper ;" but an admirable picture. Admired highly the Flink and its pendant, the interior by Petershoof, but the figures not his. Struck with his Greek interior; cold, massive, and true to nature. Christ healing the Sick, certainly by P. da Cortona. The Hobbima superlative. He highly admired, for the grandeur of the conception, and its atmospheric effects, the Salvator above. The Bartolomeo a glorious landscape. The Albano much and ill repaired. Christ amidst the Doctors, a noble picture,-very like Rubens. The landscapes not Vernet's, but Bourdon's, unquestionable and fine. The Bassano an exquisite specimen. The expression of the Magdalen divine, the shadows darkened by time, but transparent still. The Ruysdael very pretty and genuine. The Claude pure and exquisite; the effect of air quite inconceivable in it; its fine harmony and splendour overpowering all rivalry, and reducing Wilson to the flatness of a tinted drawing. He took the Guardi for a Canaletto, at a distance! Admired the remnant of the P. Veronese, in the dressing room. Powerfully impressed with the Moses striking the Rock: admired its general multitudinous effect, and splendid yet harmonious colouring; dashed off, he thought, by some great artist, from the first impression. He said mine was a capital private collection,--one of the best he had ever seen.‡ * There was another imitator of Salvator, of the name of Linkranko. See Dalaway's Walpole's Painters. EDIT. 66 ተ My Claude is greatly improved by varnish. In air, transcending any picture I ever saw; the inch of space between the boat and the pharos is a league, and the deception survives the nicest and most accurate inspection." This is the last account that will be given of this collection of Pictures, which Mr. Green so highly valued and so much enjoyed. I believe no additions were made to it after this time. The collection is entire, though removed out of the house where it was originally placed, and for the present waiting a fresh arrangement. EDIT. MR. URBAN, Cork, Jan. 27. THERE are periods and characters exhaustless of interest, because ever teeming with events deeply affecting, by direct or consequent influence, civilized society, not only in its largest scale of contemplation, but in its minutest dependancies; and few if any historical epochs present, I may confidently affirm, claims on our consideration or inquiry, superior to the reigns of Louis XIV. and Napoleon. Both equally assumed to be, and virtually were, the impersonations or types of the State; for the emphatic "L'Etat, c'est moi," of Louis, we find literally repeated and specially adopted by Napoleon. "Je répete encore que véritablement la Chose Publique L'Etat, c'est moi,” are his expressions the 7th of September 1816; and, on the 29th of February before he had asserted-" qu'il eût pu être considéré à lui- seul, comme la véritable constitution de l'Empire." Again, on the 16th of March, same year, in an interview with my near relative, Colonel, now Lieutenant-General, Sir H. S. Keating, his language was not less forcible," Je suis la patrie." (See Las Cases under those dates, as also Bignon's history, tome viii. p. 68, the Gentleman's Magazine for November 1838, p. 482, &c.) Thus, circumstances perfectly insignificant respective to ordinary individuals or monarchs, acquire a paramount importance in relation to such personages, forming, as they do, the absorbing centre of contemporaneous attraction. Accurate information, therefore, on their characters and habits is proportionally desirable. It is with this impression, that I subjoin, 1st. Some observations, corrective of a very prevalent error in regard to Louis-the Rhamases of modern times. And, 2nd. A series of authentic facts illustrative He was the first general officer so promoted, after the higher ranks of the army were opened to Catholics in 1817. (My father's grand-nephew.) The Royal Library contains no less than 531 engraved portraits of Louis, and 433 of Napoleon, with 300 of Henry IV. The number of engravings in that rich repository altogether is 900,516, of which 1,805 are of Rembrandt. 90,566 are portraits. GENT. MAG. VOL. XIX. of the earlier years and preparatory development of the genius of the Emperor, very recently disclosed to light. The dawn of "Le Grand Siécle," or reign of the Great King, as, by acknowledged pre-eminence, it is new distinguished, after his release from the chain of Mazarin's habitual ascendancy, was marked by no occurrence of a private nature which has excited more enduring sympathy than the circumstances attending the young monarch's passion for Louise de la Vallière, and this lady's resulting fate and feelings. Nothing connected with her name can fail to command attention, or should be suffered to remain discoloured or fallacious. I, therefore, may with some confidence reckon upon the reader's indulgence, while I indicate and rectify the long-existing misconception, which applies to her the personally-depreciating, and wellknown lines, of Madame de Sévigné's profligate kinsman and maligner, Bussi-Rabutin. "Que Deodatus est heureux, But the truth is, as has been demonstrated by M. Bazin and others, that this stanza of a licentious song was written in 1659, more than two years before the future favourite, then not fifteen, had left her native Tou cess. raine, or had ever been seen by her royal lover; for it was not until after the marriage of our Henrietta-Anne with Philip of Orleans, which was solemnised the 31st of March, 1661, that Mademoiselle de la Vallière arrived at court as maid of honour to the prinIn consequence of the joyful and unexpected birth of Louis, whose mother had been childless for three and twenty years of wedlock, (16151638) he was popularly surnamed "Dieu-donné," a God-send,- here Latinised Deodatus; and the lady referred to with so expansive a feature, was Marie Mancini, one of Cardinal Mazarin's nieces, afterwards wife of the Roman Prince, Colonna, and Louis' first serious passion. We learn from recorded, as well as traditional story, that at the close of Lent, and during the solemnities of its last week, in 1659, several young men 2 K -Vivonne, subsequently Duc de Mortemart, and possessor of the wit proverbially attached to that name-Guiche -Manicamp, Cavois, with other courtiers, as we are told by Bussi, (Mémoires, tome 1.) assembled at Roissi, a village about twelve miles from Paris, afterwards the rural retreat of the famous Law, and property of the Princes de Carignan, (Gent. Mag. for January 1842, p. 35,) and there, in derision of the sacred ceremonies of the period, committed, it was asserted, the most outrageous acts of impiety, such as I forbear staining these pages with their recital. Bussi, however, while avowing the prevalence, energetically denies the truth of these reports. In vindicating himself to the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria,* he * In this Magazine for December 1842, p. 591, a verse is produced of the Great Frederick, expressive of his resolution not to survive a continuance of adverse fortune. "Je dois en affrontant l'orage, Penser, vivre et mourir en-roi." This is nearly a transcript, though unacknowledged, of Anne of Austria's epitaph, which he found in Bouhour's " Manière de Bien Penser dans les Ouvrages d'Esprit," page 104, a work with which his early correspondence proves his acquaintance. "Elle sut mépriser les caprices du sort, Regarder sans horreur les horreurs de la mort; At page 588 of the same article, another line of the royal Poet,-" Evitez de Bernis la stérile abondance," is obviously the echo of Boileau's, "Fuyez de ces auteurs l'abondance stérile," (Art Poétique, Chant 1. 59). Other examples might be easily adduced of similar purloining; for, however inventive or copious his military resources may be allowed, his French vocabulary and poetic powers appear very scanty and feeble. Yet, all his literary compositions, embracing above twenty volumes, are in this language; while he neglected and undervalued his own noble idiom. His master in poetry, though with natural faculties of the first order, was scarcely less a plagiarist,-Shakspere, in particular, was the object at once of his plunder and malignity; but the proofs would overload these columns. "Hoc habent pessimum animi magnâ fortuna insolentes, quos læserunt et oderunt." (Seneca de Irâ, lib. ii. cap. 33, copied by Tacitus in Vita Agricolæ, cap. 42.) An instance, however, from another quarter, and in connection with Frederick, for it occurs in Voltaire's Epistle to him in 1741, will be more apposite. He there writes, "Et quoique vous sachiez tout penser et tout faire, The thought declared in these verses is clearly borrowed from those of Voiture addressed to the Grand Condé in 1643, though, doubtless, much embellished by Voltaire in their expression. They were written immediately after Condé's, then Enghuien's, memorable victory of Rocroi, so admirably pourtrayed in Bossuet's funeral oration of the hero, as Voltaire's epistle bears date the 20th April 1741, ten days subsequent to Frederick's first triumph at Molowitz. Voiture's lines are as follow: "Que, d'une force sans seconde La mort sait ses traits élancer, Et qu'un peu de plomb peut casser La plus belle tête du monde." In Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique, article, Gout, a long extract is given of Voiture's composition, including this extract; but nowhere does he avow his obligation to this coryphæus of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. An equally evident plagiarism by Voltaire, in his Zadig, chapter xx. (or, L'Hermite), of Parnell's Hermit, is pointed out in the Gent. Mag. for April 1837, p. 360, and the original source of the story indicated; but, indeed, "that there is no new thing under the sun," is peculiarly applicable to poetical productions. (Ecclesiastes, ch. i. v. 9; or, in the Vulgate, v. 10, nihil sub sole novi.") maintains that, as his enemies could not impeach his loyalty or courage, they attacked him on these imputed grounds of sacrilege, of which her Majesty, he says, appeared to have acquitted him, but she added, "qu'il était vrai qu'on m'avait accusé d'être un peu libertin, et même d'avoir écrit quelque chose de ce caractère là," &c. Here the queen obviously alludes to the above-mentioned stanzas, and this conversation occurred in 1659, while the rumour of the scenes, or débauche, of Roissy were rife and recent, and when Louise de la Vallière had not yet attained the maturity of womanhood, or ever seen the king. She could not, it is quite manifest, have been the object of Bussi's profane song, each couplet of which was closed, in mocking parody of the church hymns, with the sacred invocation, "Alléluia," a sufficient presumption of the character of these orgies; nor could their author plead the extenuation of youth; for, as he was born in 1618, he had then passed his fortieth year. The Count de Brienne, in his Mémoires, page 106, vol. ii. likewise makes allusion to these revels; and Madame de Motteville, (tome x.). in more direct relation of the matter to Marie Mancini, says, "Le peu de beauté de cette nièce de Mazarin fut célébré par un couplet que firent des jeunes débauchés, et qui eut grande vogue." This lady and the Count were contemporaries of the period, but the circumstances were then either unknown to, or overlooked by Louis, until the appearance in 1665, of Bussi's "Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules," (5 tomes, 12mo.) or satirical description of the court, for which he was immured during eighteen months in the Bastille; though Voltaire, in his Siécle de Louis XIV. chap. xxiv. says, "La véritable cause était cette chanson, où le roi était trop compromis, et dont alors on renouvella le souvenir pour perdre Bussi." again we have authority for the precedence, and by some interval, of the song to the publication of the satirical work, which had, it seems, been sur Here reptitiously printed from a purloined manuscript. But Bussi's imprisonment in 1665, at the moment of Madame de la Vallière's highest favour, gave probable grounds for attributing the cause to her, however founded in error, and irreconcileable with obvious facts, the popular belief on the subject was, and has continued to be.* The first genuine passion of Louis was certainly that for Marie Mancini, which his mother really, and the Cardinal, like our Chancellor Clarendon on a similar occasion, affectedly, resisted, when the young king appeared disposed to consecrate it by marriage, and raise her to the throne. He yielded, however, to the public outcry and his mother's remonstrances, in shortly after espousing a daughter of Spain, when the disappointed lady became, in 1661, the wife of the Roman Constable Colonna, with whom she was far from happy. Altogether, her subsequent destiny presented a strange and variegated succession of adventures, similar to her sister's, the Duchess of Mazarin, who, from her long residence in England, is better known to us. In Marie's last interview with her royal lover, she upbraided him with his want of energy, "Vous pleurez, vous êtes roi, et je pars!" A very singular and littleknown volume, published at Rome in 1670, was of her composition, or, at least, bears her name. "Discorso Astrofisico delle mutazioni de' tempi e di altri accidenti mondani dell' anno 1670." (small quarto.) Her elder sister, Olympia, had previously attracted the transient notice of Louis; but on the transfer of his attentions to Marie, she married the Count (erroneously called Duke by the editor of Brienne, tome ii. p. 375,) of Soissons, a prince of Savoy, by whom she was mother of the fa mous Prince Eugene, the associate of Marlborough in the humiliation of France. The youngest, the most beautiful, and most cherished by her uncle, of the five sisters, was Hortense, Duchess of Mazarin, above mentioned, who brought her husband, * It is to the birth of her daughter, afterwards Princess de Conti, that male professional attendance on maternal labour, or the accoucheur exchanged for the midwife, is usually referred, and the profession practically established, She with the name of Mazarin, imposed as a condition a fortune fully tantamount to three millions sterling; but nothing could be more contrasted than their characters and tempers. died at Chelsea in 1699; but, long before, in 1675, her Memoirs, in the first person, as if by herself, though, in fact, written by St. Réal, were published by the Elzevirs, at Amsterdam, under the impress of Cologne, "chez P. Marteau," with the title of D.M.L.D.M. significative of "Madame la Duchesse de Mazarin," in 12mo. Still earlier records, however, exist of the monarch's juvenile propensities; and abundant, as may be supposed, was the fuel ministered to the flame; for, while yet a mere boy, the Duchess of Châtillon (shame to the illustrious house of Coligni!) tried to engage his heart, if premature, in the seduction of his person, as the poignant lines of Benserade, quoted by Brienne, too plainly testify. "Châtillon, gardez vos appas Pour votre beauté, Il faut bien autre chose, Qu'une minorité." This high-born, but mean-principled lady, was the widow of Gaspar de Coligny, duc de Châtillon, and greatgrandson of the celebrated victim of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He changed, however, his paternal creed, and died in 1639, leaving a son, whose early demise extinguished the great Admiral's descendants. His widow, here introduced, Angélique de Montmorency, was the daughter of the Count de Boutteville, executed in 1627, for a fatal duel, and sister to the Marshal Luxembourg, the disciple, perhaps the equal, of his kinsman Condé. She subsequently became the wife of the Duke of Mecklenburgh. Madame de Sevigné, in a letter, dated the 3rd of February, 1695, makes no laudatory mention of this duchess, whose sister, Mademoiselle de Boutteville, was courted by Condé. There exist, doubtless, families of earlier authenticated antiquity than that of Montmorency, of which these ladies and the Marshal were members, (See Gent. Mag. for September, 1840, p. 249), and whose illustration is coeval with the Capetian Bourbons; but that illustration has ever since, that is, since the tenth century, shone in undimmed splendour. "If the house of Bourbon were to perish,” said Henry IV., "none would more worthily replace it than that of Montmorency." It reckons in its annals six constables, the highest office of the kingdom, eleven marshals, and four high admirals of France; and claims kindred, in some degree, with almost every crowned head in Europe. Nor was the surname of Dieudonné, of which I have stated the origin, left unsung either in panegyric or ridicule; the former, of course, in multiplied elaborations; but the following example of the latter has all the sting and point of an epigram. It is ascribed to Bussi-Rabutin, whose "Histoire Abrégée de Louis le Grand," (1699-12mo.) is, on the other hand, a most fulsome encomium of the same monarch! I derive it from De Brienne's Mémoires, vol. ii. p. 304. "Ce Roi si grand, si fortuné, Plus sage que César, plus vaillant qu' Alexandre, On dit que Dieu nous l'a donné : Brienne subjoins a sonnet communicated to him, he says, by Boileau, though believed not to be its author. The admirers of Louis may contest its truth, in application to lim; but its literary merit entitles it, I think, to attention. "Ce peuple que jadis Dieu gouverna lui-même, Trop las de son bonheur, voulut avoir un Roi: 6 "Eh bien !' dit le Seigneur, peuple ingrat et sans foi, Tu sentiras bientôt le poids du diadème. Celui que je mettrai dans le pouvoir suprême, D'un empire absolu voudra régner sur toi ; Ses seules volontés lui serviront de loi, Et rien n'assouvira son avarice extrême. |