faisait oublier celle du temps.'' Like Johnson, he dreaded death: like Johnson, he met it calmly, and found unexpected consolation in faith:

'It is dreadful to meet old age and death. No one understood so well how to fortify me against them as you. I mean, to fortify me humanly; for I am farther advanced in religion than you. I fancy you have remained very heathenish; which, amongst other things, clearly comes of your blind love for that heathen of heathens, Goethe: I, on the contrary, during the last ten years, have become thoroughly Christian, and hold Christianity to be the genuine centre of the world. For all that is still youthful in me, I have to thank this beneficial revolution.'

and he never One evening,

This was written to Rahel in 1811, fell back into' unbelief or indifference. during the later years of his life, after dining at the Weinberg with Baron de Prokesch and two other friends, he accompanied them to Vienna in a carriage; and so fascinating was his conversation that on arriving at the place where they were to separate, they stopped the carriage between three and four hours to listen to him. The subject was the immortality of the soul, which he eloquently upheld against all the sceptical arguments that could be suggested or recalled. There is a somewhat similar story of Windham passing half the night in the streets in conversation with Burke.

He died in debt; and the sole tribute to his memory, in the way of monument, is a simple tablet placed over his grave by Fanny Elssler. A fitting motto for it might have been taken from Goethe's 'Helena'—

'Châteaubriand, Congrès de Vérone.

Viel geschmäht und viel bewundert' (much abused and much admired). He had fairly earned both the abuse and the admiration; and a dispute whether the good or the bad preponderated, would be the familiar contest about the colour of the bi-coloured shield.

That so little was done for him by his most influential friend sounds very like a confirmation of Swift's remark, that great men seldom do anything for those with whom they live in intimacy; but his refusal of the Emperor's offer of a promotion which was to have included pecuniary advantages, suggests a valid excuse for Metternich, although the refusal itself is unaccountable. If Gentz expected to disarm envy by a show of humility or disinterestedness, his ordinary discernment of the springs of human action was at fault: people far more readily forgive honours and titles than social superiority and influence without rank or wealth; and his position in the great and gay world, with nothing but his personal qualities to show for it, was precisely that which most stimulated the malice by wounding the self-love of his calumniators. The mercenary nature of his relations with other countries was of course their most formidable weapon; which was blunted or parried by the positive and (we believe) well. founded assertion that Metternich was privy to all his transactions with foreign ministers, and that foreign

1 They call me nothing but Jonathan, and I said I believed they would leave me Jonathan as they found me, and that I never knew a ministry do anything for those whom they made companions of their pleasures, and I believe you will find it so; but I care not.' (Journal to Stella, February 7, 1711.)

ministers were privy to his unreserved communications with Metternich.

Extreme delicacy in money matters is of modern growth amongst public men in England, and fifty years since had not taken root in the despotic Courts of Europe. All servants of the British crown are now peremptorily forbidden to accept gratifications in any shape from foreign potentates. The privilege of wearing foreign orders is obtained with difficulty, and, considering how frequently they are the reward of charlatanry, might be advantageously restricted within still closer limits. Naturally, therefore, we hear with surprise of the Austrian Government permitting a public servant of Gentz's eminence to draw on foreign powers for his chief means of subsistence; and the notoriety of his so doing flings the main responsibility upon them. There was no secrecy, or pretence of secrecy, in the matter: our only precise knowledge of his subsidies is derived from his corrected diaries; and one undeniable fact in his favour is that the whole of his surviving friends dwell most emphatically on his loyalty, integrity, and truthfulness.

From the female point of view, faults and weaknesses became merits and fascinations. In a letter after his death to Ranke, Rahel, after deploring the impossibility of conveying her precise impressions by words, proceeds :

'Therefore you cannot know that I then, and for that very reason, loved my lost friend when he said or did something downright childish. I loved him for saying he was so happy to be the first man in Prague,—that all the highest

functionaries, great lords, and great ladies, were obliged to send or come to him, &c.-with a laugh of transport, and looking full into my eyes. Wise enough to be silent about this, is every trained distorted animal; but who has the selfbetraying soul, the childlike simplicity of heart, to speak it out?

There are many whom we are obliged to praise piece by piece, and they do not find their way into the heart by love: there are others, a few, who may be much blamed, but they ever open the heart, and stir it to love. This is what Gentz did for me and for me he will never die.'

Although this theory of amiability is confirmed by Rochefoucauld, who maintains that we love people rather for their faults than their virtues, such evidence to character would weigh more with a German than with an English tribunal. Yet it is by German modes. of thought and conduct that German men and women must principally be judged. The moral atmosphere in which they lived, with their temptations and opportunities, must be kept constantly in view when they are arraigned at the bar of European public opinion; and a purely English standard of right and wrong would obviously lead to unjust or uncharitable conclusions when applied to a Rahel or a Gentz.

MARIA EDGEWORTH: HER LIFE AND

WRITINGS.

[FROM THE EDINBURGH REVIEW FOR OCT. 1867.]

A Memoir of Maria Edgeworth, with a Selection from her Letters. By the late MRS. EDGEWORTH, edited by her Children. Not published. In 3 vols. 1867.

WE are afraid of appealing so confidently to the present generation, but are there any survivors of the last who do not habitually associate the name of Maria Edgeworth with a variety of agreeable recollections?—with scenes, images, and characters which were the delight of their youth ?—with the choicest specimens of that school of fiction in which amusement is blended with utility, and the understanding is addressed simultaneously with the fancy and the heart? All these, and they must still be many, will be rejoiced to hear that a Memoir has recently appeared which may enable them to watch the everyday life of their old favourite, to peep into the innermost folds of her mind, to track her genius to its source, to mark the growth of her powers, and fix how much was the gift of nature and how much the product of cultivation or of art. For ourselves, we were led by it at once to a reperusal of