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The Helicon of which he drank the gushing and that it exhibited a graceful and animated literapure stream, was stirred into mire by the slippers ture, that it was characterized by striking advances of school-girls, city-apprentices, and chambermaid-in national power, and that towards its close it poetesses of every shade of character. gave the world a Chatham, as if to reconcile us to its existence, and throw a brief splendor over its close.

A new Malthus for the express purpose of extinguishing, by strangulation or otherwise, the whole race of annual travellers in Normandy, Picardy, up the Seine and down the Seine, up the Loire and down the Loire, on the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the Brenner Alps, would be a benefactor to society.

But no period of British history developed more unhappily those vices which naturally ripen in the hotbed of political intrigue. The names of Harley, Bolingbroke, Walpole, and Newcastle might head a general indictment against the manliness, Whether England would be the wiser and hap- the integrity, and the honor of England. The pier if, instead of being separated from the conti- low faithlessness of Harley, who seems to have nent by a channel, she were separated by an been carrying on a Jacobite correspondence at the ocean, is a question which we leave to the philos-foot of the throne-the infamous treachery of his opher; but there can be no doubt of the nature brother-minister, St. John-the undenied and unof its answer by the historian. It will be found deniable corruption of Walpole, and the half-imthat the national character had degenerated in becility which made the chicane of Newcastle every period when that intercourse increased, and ridiculous, while his perpetual artifice alone saved that it resumed its vigor only in the periods when his imbecility from overthrow-altogether form a that intercourse was restricted. congeries, which, like the animal wrecks of the primitive world, almost give in their deformity a reason for its extinction.

It would not be difficult to exemplify this principle, from the earliest times of English independence. But our glance shall be limited to the era of the reformation, when England began first to assume an imperial character.

Elizabeth was always contemptuous of the foreigner, and boasted of the defiance; the national mind never rose to a higher rank than in her illustrious reign. James renewed the connections of the throne with France, and Charles I. renewed the connection of the royal line. It may have been for the purpose of checking the national contagion of the intercourse, that rebellion was suffered to grow up in his kingdom. But whatever might be the origin, the effect was to break off the intercourse with France and her corruptions, and to exhibit a new energy and purity in the people. Cromwell raised a sudden barrier against France by his political system, and the nation recovered its daring and its character in its contempt for the foreigner.

In the reign of Charles II. the intercourse was resumed, and corruption rapidly spread from France to the court, and from the court to the people. England, proud and powerful under the protectorate, became almost a rival to France in Infidelity and profligacy in the course of the reign. Again the war of William with France closed the continent upon the national intercourse, and the manliness of the national character partially revived. But with the death of Anne the intercourse was renewed, and the result was a renewal of the corruption. The war of the French revolution again and utterly broke off the intercourse for the time; and it is undeniable that the national character suddenly exhibited a most singular and striking return to the original virtues of the country to its fortitude, to its patriotism, and to the purity of its religious feelings.

There can be no question of the perpetual villany which then assumed the insulted name of politics; none, of the utter sacrifice of public interests to the office-hunting avarice of all the successive parties; none, of the atrocious corruptibility of them all; none, of that general decay of religion, morals, and national honor, which was the result of a time when principle was laughed at, and when the loudest laugher passed for the wisest man of his generation.

The cause was obvious. Charles II. had brought with him from France all the vices of a court, where the grossest licentiousness found its grossest example in the person of the sovereign. Profligate as private life naturally is in all the dominions of a religion where every crime is rated by a tariff, and where the confessional relieves every man of his conscience, the conduct of Louis XIV. had made profligacy the actual pride of the throne.

The feeble and frivolous Charles was more a Frenchman than an Englishman; more a courtier than a king; and fitter to be a page in the scraglio than either.

The royal robe on the shoulders of such aʼmonarch, instead of concealing his vices, only made them glitter in the national eyes; and the morals of England might have been irretrievably stained, but for that salutary judgment which interposed between the people and the dynasty, and by driving James into an ignominious exile, placed a man of principle on the throne. Unfortunately, the reign of William was too busy and too brief to produce any striking change in the habits of the people. His whole policy was turned to the great terror of the time, the daring ambition of France. He fought on the outposts of Europe. All his The period from the Treaty of Utrecht to the ideas were continental. The singular constitution war of the French Revolution, has always ap- of his nature gave him the spirit of a warrior, peared to us a blot on the annals of England. It combined with the seclusion of a monk. Solitary it true that it contained many names of distinction, even in camps, what must he be in the trivial

manners was effectively restored, and the nation had to thank the monarch for the example and for the restoration.

the great Duke of Marlborough's estate, both of them appointments which implied a certain degree of intelligence and character. He also at one period was deputy-auditor of the exchequer. Mrs. Clayton soon obtained the confidence of that most impracticable of all personages, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.

bustle of a court ?—and, engrossed with the largest interests of nations, what interest could he attach to the squabbles of rival professors of licentiousness, to giving force to a feeble drama, or Lady Sundon was of an obscure family, of the regulating the decorum of factions equally corrupt name of Dyves. Her portrait represents her as and querulous, and long since equally despised handsome, and her history vouches for her cleverand forgotten? ness. It was probably owing to both that she The reign of Anne made some progress in the was married to Mr. Clayton, then holding an apnational restoration. But it was less by the influ-pointment in the treasury, and also the agent for ence of the queen than by the work of time. The "gallants" of the reign of Charles were now a past generation. Their frolics were a gossip's tale; their showy vices were now as tarnished as their wardrobe, and both were hung out of sight. The man who, in the days of Anne, would have ventured on the freaks of Rochester, would have finished his nights in the watch-house, and his years in the plantations. The wit of the past age was also rude, vulgar, and pointless to the polished sarcasm of Pope, or even to the reckless sting of Swift. Yet manners were still coarse, and the queen complained of Harley's coming to her after dinner-" troublesome, impudent, and drunk." Her court exhibited form without dignity, and her parliaments the most violent partisanship in politics and religion, without sincerity or substance in either. But the long peace threw open the floodgates of frivolity and fashion once more, and France again became the universal model.

On glancing over the history of public men through this diversified period, the astonishment of an honest mind is perpetually excited at the unblushing effrontery with which the most scandalous treacheries seem to have been all but acknowledged. France was still the great corrupter, and French money was lavished, not more in undermining the fidelity of public men, than in degrading the character of the nation. But when Charles was an actual pensioner of the French king, and James a palpable dependent on the French throne, the force of example may be easily conceived, | among the spendthrift and needy officials, one half of whose life was spent at the gaming table.

On the death of Queen Anne, the duke and duchess had returned to England, but, repulsed shortly after by the ungracious manner of the ungrateful George I., they soon abandoned public life. Still it was difficult for so stirring a personage as the duchess altogether to abandon court intrigue, and probably for the purpose of obtaining some shadow of that influence which she might afterwards turn into substance, she contrived to obtain for her correspondent and dependant, Mrs. Clayton, the place of bedchamber-woman to Caroline, wife of the heir-apparent.

It is obvious that such a position might give all the advantages of the most confidential intercourse to a clever woman, who had her own game to play. The princess herself was in a position which required great dexterity. She was the wife of a brutish personage whom it was impossible to respect, and yet with whom it was hazardous to quarrel. She was the daughter-in-law of a prince utterly incapable of popularity, yet singularly jealous of power. She was surrounded by a court, half Jacobite, and wholly unprincipled; and exposed to the constant observation of a people still dubious of the German title to the throne, contemptuous by nature of all foreign alliances, disgusted with the manners of the court, and still disturbed by the struggles of the fallen dynasty. It was obviously of high importance to such a personage, to have in her employ so clear-headed, and at the same time so stirring an agent as Mrs. Clayton. There seems even to have been a strong similitude in their characters-both keen, both intelligent, both fond of power, and both exhibiting no delicacy whatever with regard to the means for its possession. Mrs. Clayton never shrank from intercourse with those profligate persons who then abounded at court, when she had a point to carry ; and Caroline, as queen, endured for thirty years the notorious irregularities of her lord and master, without a remonstrance. She even went further. She pretended, in the midst of those gross offences, her looseness of conduct was suffered to approach to be even tenderly attached to him, talked of " not the drawing-room. The public feeling was sud-valuing her children as a grain of sand in compardenly righted. The shameless forehead was sent ison with him," and not merely acquiesced in coninto deserved obscurity. The debased heart felt duct which must have galled every feeling of virtue that there was a punishment which no rank, wealth, in a pure heart, but involved herself in the natural or effrontery could resist. The decorum of public suspicion of playing a part for the sake of power,

On those vilenesses history looks back with an eye of disgust. But they were the natural results of an age when religion was at the lowest ebb in Europe; when our travelled gentry only brought back with them that disregard of Christianity which they had learned in Paris and Rome, and when Voltaire's works were found on the toilet of every woman in high life.

The accession of George III. was, in this view, of incalculable value to England. Contempt for the marriage tie is universally the source of all popular corruption. The king instantly discountenanced the fashionable levity of noble life. No man openly stigmatized for profligacy, dared to appear before him. No woman scandalized by

and forgetting the injuries of the wife in order to | lishment. It is to the honor of later times, that retain the influence of the queen.

There can be no doubt that this policy had its reward. The king gave her power, or at least never attempted to disturb the power belonging to her rank, while it left him the full indulgence of his vices. She thus obtained two objects—to the world she appeared a suffering angel, to the king a submissive wife. In the mean time she managed both court and king, possessed vast patronage, perhaps more general court popularity than any queen of the age; led a pleasant life, enjoying the sweets without the responsibilities of royalty; and by judicious liberality of purse, and equally dexterous flexibility of opinion, contrived to carry some degree of public respect with her, while she lived, and be followed by some degree of public regret to her grave.

But this example was productive of palpable evil. The example of the higher ranks always operates powerfully on the lower. The toleration exhibited by the highest female in the kingdom for the most notorious vices, gave additional effect to that fashion of flexibility, which is the besetting sin of polished times. If the queen had firmly set her face against the offences of her husband, or if she had shown the delicacy of a woman of virtue in keeping aloof from all intercourse with women whom the public voice had long marked as criminal, she might have, partially at least, reformed the corruptions of her profligate period.

such offences could not now be committed with impunity. But the example of Louis XIV. had sanctioned all royal excesses, and the conduct of his successor was an actual study of the most reckless profligacy. The constant intercourse of the English nobility with Paris, to which allusion has already been made, had accustomed them to such scenes, and persons of the highest condition, of the most important offices of the state, and even of the most respectable private character, such as respectability was in those days, associated with those mistresses, corresponded with them, and even submitted to be assisted by their influence with the king.

We shall give but one example; that of Henrietta Hobart, afterwards Lady Suffolk. A baronet's daughter, and poor, she had married in early life the son of the Earl of Suffolk, nearly as poor as herself. In their narrowness of means, their only resource was some court office, and to obtain this, and probably to live cheap, they went to Hanover, to lay the foundation of favor with the future monarch of England. To some extent they succeeded. For, on the accession of George the First, Mrs. Howard was appointed bedchamber woman to Caroline the Princess of Wales.

Courts, in all countries, seem to be dull places; ceremonial fails as a substitute for animation, and dinners of fifty covers become a mere tax on time, taste, and common sense. Etiquette is only ennui under another name, and the eternal anticipation of enjoyment is the death of all pleasure. Miss Burney's narrative has let in light on the sullen mysteries of the maid of honor's life, and her pencil has evidently given us only the picture of what had been in the times of our forefathers, and what will be in the times of our posterity.

But this indifference to all the nobler feelings was the style of the day. Religion was scarcely more than a form; its preachers were partisans; its controversies were court feuds, its principles were politics, and its objects were stoles and mitres. In an age when Sacheverel, with his rampant nonsense, had been a popular apostle, and Swift, with his pungent abominations, had been a church adviser of the cabinet, and when Hoadley was regarded alternately as a pillar and as a sub-out the not less invidious faculty of wit. All the verter of the faith, we may easily conjecture the national estimate of Christianity.

Unfortunately, a considerable proportion of the correspondence in these volumes is from clerical candidates for personal services; and if singular eagerness in pursuit of preferment, and singular homage to the influence of the queen's bed-chamber-woman, could stamp them with shame, the brand would be at once broad and indelible. But it must be remembered, that there are contemptible minds in every profession, that these men acted in direct violation of the principles of their religion, and that the church is no more accountable for the delinquencies of its members, than the courts of law for the morals of the jail.

Mrs. Howard was well-looking without the invidious attribute of great beauty, and lively with

court officials crowded her apartments in the palace. Chesterfield, young Churchill, Lord Hervey, Lord Scarborough, all hurried to the tea-table of the well-bred bedchamber-woman, to escape the dreary duties and monotonous moping of attendance on the throne. Lady Walpole, Mrs. Selwyn, Mary Lepell, and Mary Bellenden, formed a part of this coterie-all women of presumed character, yet all associating familiarly with women of none. Of Mrs. Howard, Swift observed in his acid style-"That her private virtues, for want of room to operate, might be folded and laid up clean, like clothes in a chest, never to be put on ; till satiety, or some reverse of fortune, should dispose her to retirement."

Then, probably in reference to the prudery with which she occasionally covered her conduct, "In the mean time," said he, "it will be her prudence to take care that they be not tarnished and moth-eaten, for want of opening and airing, and turning, at least once a year."

Another repulsive feature of the period was the conduct of conspicuous females. The habits of Germany in its higher ranks were offensive to all purity. The Brunswick princes had brought those habits to St. James'. Born and educated in Germany, they were regardless even of the feeble decorums of English life, and a king's mistress was an understood portion of the royal estab-ment whatever.

Those matters seem to have sought no conceal"Es regolar," says the Span

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iard, when his country is charged with some session of what secret Lady Sundon has preserved especial abomination. Howard, the husband, such an ascendant over the queen.' though a roué, at last went into the quadrangle at Mrs. Clayton possessed at least one merit (if St. James' and publicly demanded his wife. He merit it be) in a remarkable degree, that of prothen wrote to the archbishop. His letter was viding for her relatives. She was of a poor famgiven to the queen, and by her to Mrs. Howard. ily, and she contrived to get something for them Yet all this scandal never interrupted the lady's all. Her three nieces had court places, one of intercourse with the highest personages of the them that of a maid of honor; one brother obMrs. Howard continued to be the queen's tained a cornetcy in the Horse Guards; another bedchamber-woman; the queen suffered her per- a chief clerkship in the annuity office; and her sonal attendance; her carriage was escorted by nephew was sent out with Lord Albemarle to John Duke of Argyle; her husband obtained a Spain. A more remarkable relative was Clayton, pension to hold his tongue; and even when the Bishop of Clogher, who evidently knew the value king grow tired of the liaison, and wished to get of her patronage, for a more importunate suitor, rid of her, actually complaining to the queen, and a more persevering sycophant, never kissed "that he did not know why she would not let hands. Finally, she obtained a peerage for her him part with a deaf old woman, of whom he was husband, a distinction in which, of course, she weary," the politic Caroline would not allow him herself shared, but which probably she desired to give her up, "lest a younger favorite should merely to throw some eclat round a singularly、 gain a greater ascendancy over him." After this submissive husband. we must hear no more of the delicacy of Queen Caroline. Virtue and religion scarcely belonged to her day.

Yet there was no slight infusion of pleasantry in the minds of some of the royal household. When they got rid of the stately pedantry of CarIn a court of this intolerable worldliness, the oline, and the smooth hypocrisy of her confidante, worldly must thrive, and Mrs. Clayton advanced when the gross and formal monarch was shut out, year by year in the imitation of her mistress, and and the younger portion of the court were left to in power. She, as well as Lady Suffolk, adopted their own inventions, they seem to have enjoyed Caroline's patronage of letters, and corresponded themselves like children at play. There was a a good deal with the clever men of the time. We vast deal of flirtation of course, for this folly was quote one of Lady Suffolk's letters addressed to as much the fashion of the time as rouge. But Swift, apparently in answer to some of his perpet-there was also a great deal of verse-writing, corual complaints of a world, which used him only respondence of all degrees of wit, and now and too well after all.

"September, 1727. "I write to you to please myself. I hear you are melancholy, because you have a bad head and deaf ears. These are two misfortunes I have labored under these many years, and yet never was peevish with either myself or the world. Have I more philosophy and resolution than you? Or am I so stupid that I do not feel the evil?

"Answer those queries in writing, if poison or other methods do not enable you soon to appear in person. Though I make use of your own word, poison, yet let me tell you, it is nonsense, and I desire you will take more care for the time to come. Now, you endeavor to impose on my understanding by taking no care of your own."

The value of a keen and active confidante in a court of perpetual intrigue was obvious, and Mrs. Clayton was the double of the queen. But a deeper and more painful reason is assigned for her confidence. The queen had a malady which is not described in her memoirs, but which we suppose to have been a cancer, which she was most anxious to hide from all the world. Walpole discovered it, and the discovery exhibits his skill in human nature.

On the death of Lady Walpole, the queen, who was about the same age, asked Sir Robert many questions as to her illness; but he remarked, that she frequently reverted to one particular malady, which had not been Lady Walpole's disease. "When he came home," (his son writes,)" he said to me-now, Horace, I know by the pos

66

But

then caricature with pencil and pen. Mary
Lepell, in one of those jeux d'esprit, described
the "Six Maids of Honor" as six volumes bound
in calf. The first, Miss Meadows, as mingled
satire and reflection; the second, as a plain trea-
tise on morality; the third, as a rhapsody; the
fourth, (supposed to be the future Lady Pem-
broke,) as a volume, neatly bound, of "The whole
Art of Dressing;" the next, a miscellaneous
work, with essays on Gallantry;" the sixth, a
folio collection of all the "Court Ballads."
there were some women of a superior stamp in the
court circle. One of those was Lady Sophia Fer-
mor, the daughter of Lady Pomfret, who seems
to have been followed by all the men of fashion,
and loved by some of them. But, like other pro-
fessed beauties, she remained unmarried, until at
last she accepted Lord Carteret, a man twice her
age. Yet the match was a brilliant one in all
other points, for Carteret was secretary of state,
and perhaps the most accomplished public man of
his time.

"Do but imagine," observes that prince of gossips, Horace Walpole, "how many passions will be gratified in that family; her own ambition, vanity, and resentment-love, she never had any; the politics, management, and pedantry of her mother, who will think to govern her son-in-law out of Froissart. Figure the instructions which she will give her daughter. Lincoln (one of her admirers) is quite indifferent, and laughs."

While the marriage was on the tapis, the beau

to go about in that bribe!" Lady Wortley keenly and promptly answered—“Madam, how can people know where wine is to be sold, unless where they see the sign?"

Another of the curiosities of this court menagerie, was Katherine, Duchess of Buckingham. She was a daughter of James the Second by Katherine Sedley, daughter of the wit, Sir Charles. James, who with all his zeal for popery was a scandalous profligate, and as shameless in his contempt of decent opinion as he was criminal in his contempt for his coronation oath; gave this illegitimate offspring the rank of a duke's daughter, and the permission to bear the royal arms! She found a husband in the Earl of Anglesea, from whom she was soon separated; the earl died, and she took another husband, John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, certainly not too youthful a bridegroom. The duke, always a wit, had been in early life one of the most dissipated men of his day, and through all the varieties and vexations of a life devoted to pleasure, had reached his 59th year. Yet, this handsome wreck, almost the last relic of the court of Charles the Second lived a dozen years longer, and left the duchess guardian of his son.

tiful Sophia was taken ill of the scarlet fever, and Lord Carteret of the gout. Nothing could be less amatory than such a crisis. But his lordship was all gallantry; he corresponded with her, read her letters to the privy council, and tired all the world with his passion. At length both recovered, and the lady had all the enjoyments which she could find in ambition. Carteret obtained an earldom, lost his place, but became only more popular, personally distinguished, and politically active. The countess then became the female head of the opposition, and gave brilliant parties, to the infinite annoyance of the Pelhams. For a while, she was the "observed of all observers." But her career came to a sudden and melancholy close. She had given promise of an heir, which would have been doubly a source of gratification to her husband; as his son by a former wife was a lunatic. But she was suddenly seized with a fever. One evening, as her mother and sister were sitting beside her, she sighed and said, “I feel death coming very fast upon me." This was their first intimation of her danger. She died on the same night! Walpole is the especial chronicler of this time. Such a man must have been an intolerable nuisance in his day, but his piquant impertinence is amusing in ours. He was evidently a wasp, pretending to perform the part of a butterfly, and fluttering over all the court flowers, only to plant his sting. As he was a perpetual flirt, he dangled round the Pomfret family; and probably received some severe rebukes from their mother, for he describes her with all the venom of an expelled dilettante. He speaks of her as all that was prim in ped-them; while she affected a sort of superstitious antry, and all that was ridiculous in affectation; as, on being told of some man who talked of nothing but Madeira, gravely asking, “What language that was;" and as attending the public act at Oxford (on the occasion of her presenting some statues to the university) in a box built for her near the vice-chancellor, “where she sat for three days together, to receive adoration, and hear herself for four hours at a time called Minerva." In this assembly, adds the wit, in his peculiar style, "she appeared in all the tawdry poverty and frippery imaginable, and in a scoured damask robe," and wondered "that she did not wash out a few words of Latin, as she used to fricassee French and Italian;" or, that "she did not torture some learned simile," as when she said, that "it was as difficult to get into an Italian coach, as it was for Cæsar to take Attica, by which she meant Utica."

But Lady Pomfret is said also to have employed her talents upon more substantial things than pedantry. She had an early intercourse with the immaculate Mrs. Clayton, with whom she was supposed to have negotiated the appointment of Lord Pomfret as master of the horse, for a pair of diamond rings, worth £1,400. The rumor appears to have obtained considerable currency; for one day when she appeared at the Duchess of Marlborough's with the jewels in her ears, the Duchess (Old Sarah) said to Lady Wortley Montague, "How can the woman have the impudence

His lordly dowager afforded the world of high life perpetual amusement. Her whole life was an unintentional caricature of royalty. Beggarly beyond conception in her private affairs, she was as pompous in public as if she had the blood of all the thrones of Europe in her veins. She evidently regarded the Brunswicks as usurpers, and hated

homage for the exiled dynasty, and gave themeverything but her money. She once made a sort of pilgrimage to visit the body of James, and pretended to shed tears over it. The monk who showed it, adroitly observed to her, that the velvet pall which covered the coffin was in rags, but her sympathies did not reach quite so far, and she would not take the hint, and saved her purse.

At the opera, she appeared in a sort of royal robe of scarlet and ermine, and everywhere made herself so supremely ridiculous, that the laughers called her Princess Buckingham. Even the deepest domestic calamity could not tame down this outrageous pride. When her only son died of consumption, she sent messengers to all her circle, telling them, that if they wished to see him lie in state," she would admit them by the back stairs." On this melancholy occasion, her only feeling seemed to be her vanity. She sent to the Duchess of Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car, which had conveyed the remains of the great duke to the grave. This preposterous request was naturally refused by the duchess, who replied, "that the car which had borne the Duke of Marlborough's dead body, should never be profaned by another."

On her own death-bed, she declared her wish to be buried beside her father James the Second. " George Selwyn, shrewdly said, that to be buried by her father, she need not be carried out of England,". (she was supposed to be actually the

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