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mention her. "The old beast is "She would have made a perfect gendead!" she writes jubilantly, in April, tleman," observes St. Simon, which 1719; adding, "I feel sure that the probably expresses well her courage, things she most regretted leaving be- strength, benevolence, and fair dealhind her were my son and myself in ing; while womanly graces were wantgood health." "I fear," she says in ing. Brusque, startlingly outspoken, another letter, "that the Maintenon's an unsparing enemy, and a faithful death will turn out to resemble that of the Gorgons- many serpents will continue to appear. If she had died thirty years ago, all the poor Huguenots would be still in France, and their Charenton chapel would still be standing."

Madame had the high-bred instinct of courtesy to her inferiors. It was to her equals that her unsparing vigor of speech was exhibited. Her love for dogs was passionate. She had them constantly with her. "You could not," she writes to her sister, "read part of my last letter, because a piece of it was torn off by one of my dogs. I know that you do not care for dogs; if you did, you would easily overlook their few faults. One of mine, named Reine, is as sensible as a human being, and begins howling the moment I am out of sight." Referring to a theory of Leibnitz, as to the immortality of animals, she says, "It is a great consolation for me to know that animals do not entirely perish, on account of my dear little dogs," a remark that recalls the saying with which an old Northumbrian vicar used to startle the orthodox of his flock, "If dogs are not allowed in Heaven, I really should hardly care to go there."

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friend, she should not be forgotten or obscured by all the brilliance and beauty of her time-brilliance which probably hid not one tithe of her rough but sterling worth.

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From The Strand Magazine. COURT DRESS AND THE SPEAKER'S DINNERS.

THERE was a report current at the beginning of the present Parliament that the speaker, commiserating the lot of members who for various reasons were not disposed to endow themselves with court dress, proposed to give a series of supplementary feasts at which ordinary dinner dress would serve. The rumor may be dismissed without a moment's consideration. The speaker is not likely, voluntarily, to divest himself of one of the conditions which temper his official hospitality. It suffices to be bound to invite in turn six hundred and seventy gentlemen to dinner, without going out of the way to remove a possible obstacle to the invitation being universally accepted. Accordingly, this session, as from time immemorial, members dining with the speaker have been required to don court dress and carry a sword by their side, when it is not between somebody else's legs.

Madame died December 8th, 1722, in her son's arms. She had been ailing for long, and faced death with characteristic courage. Many doctors came So inexorable is this law, that last to her bedside, but she said they were session it operated to the extent of all quacks, and that she was content to banishing the seconder of the address die. Her life had been a rather dreary from the speaker's table. It is the Possibly she was not sorry that invariable custom that the mover and the curtain was falling. "You can seconder of the address shall be inembrace me if you like," she said to vited to the dinner to her Majesty's one of her ladies, who kissed her hand, ministers with which the speaker hos"for I am going to a land where all pitably opens the session. Last year will be equal in the sight of God." Mr. Fenwick, whose honorable boast "We are about to lose a good prin- it is that he commenced his career as cess," said Marais in his journal (6 ; aa working collier, seconded the adrare and precious thing in these times." dress. He undertook the duty only

upon condition that he should not be seemed too much, even as a prelimcalled upon to array himself in mili-inary condition of being enabled to tary, naval, or court dress, as is the serve his country. But the uniform is quaint custom of the occasion. The imperatively necessary in connection point was yielded as far as his appear-with court duties inseparable from ance in the House of Commons was ministerial office. On visits to the concerned. But the speaker, tied and queen, attendance at the Prince of bound by immemorial custom, did not Wales's levees, and at the ministerial see his way to vary the usages of the dinners in Speaker's Court, the integministerial dinner. Accordingly, whilst rity of the British constitution demands the mover of the address, arrayed in a certain strictly ordered uniform. the martial costume of a major in the After some protest, Mr. Bright gave in militia, dined with the nobility and in the matters of coat and trousers, gentry at Speaker's Court, the seconder, even of plumed hat. But he drew the clad in sober black, humbly ate his line at the sword. Finally, concession chop at home. was made on this point, he alone of all her Majesty's ministers appearing on ceremonial occasions unembarrassed by a sword.

One peculiar distinction between the Lords and Commous is the greater jealousy with which the latter guard the sanctity of their Chamber. Both Houses have staffs of messengers, chiefly responsible as media of communication between members and the outer world. But whilst messengers in the Lords, charged with a letter, a card,

From their earliest departure on the war-path the Irish members have made a point of standing aloof from the speaker's dinner parties. There is, indeed, a story of the late Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar having been encountered on the top of a Clapham 'bus with velvet coat on his back, ruffles at his wrist, black stockings coyly hiding his shapely legs, silver buckles on his shoes, and sword in dainty scabbard hanging within easy reach of his right hand. Questioned as to the occasion or a ministerial box, may approach the for this disguise, he airily replied, person addressed and achieve his er"I've been dining with Mr. Speaker." rand, a messenger in the House of This is, however, only one of the many Commons may not approach beyond myths that linger round the memory of the bar at one end, or proceed further honest Joseph Gillis. As upon another than the steps of the speaker's chair at apocryphal occasion it was announced the other. The consequences are inthat "the Tenth never dance," so it convenient and sometimes ludicrous. remains true to this day that the Irish What happens is that the messenger, members never dine at least, not standing by the cross benches, hands with the speaker. to the nearest member the message or Shortly after Mr. Bright, in 1868, card with which he is charged, and it joined the ministry as president of the is slowly passed along the line till it Board of Trade, the clothes difficulty reaches its destination; each member presented itself. His Quaker con- in turn thinking it is meant for him, science revolted against the necessity occasionally an absent-minded statesof assuming the semi-warlike costume which forms the full dress of her Majesty's ministers. To prance around in scarlet coat, with trousers and a

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man opening a letter not addressed to him. This is a matter in which the Lords are certainly more up to date, gold lace down his and the Commons might well take a plumed cocked hat leaf out of their ordinarily despised was a sacrifice that book.

HENRY W. LUCY.

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1. THE WAVERLEY NOVELS, II. YOUNG LOVE. By L. Dougall,

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IV. RUSSIA, MONGOLIA, AND CHINA.
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VI. THE BACKWATER OF LIFE. By James

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VII. FACT AND FICTION,

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Nineteenth Century,

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For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO.

Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

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SHE seemed a wild bird caged on earth,
Who fretted in her prison bars,

A wild bird brought from heaven's
blue,

Still unforgetful of her birth;

And while she gazed out on the stars
She sighed to look where once she flew,
Until at last her wings broke through.

Now thro' the midnight gloom I gaze,

And should my wistful eyes once see
A new star drift down heaven's ways,
I know she looks once more on me..
And by the astral barrier waits
Until my angel ope the gates,
And earth no longer cages me.

ARTHUR J. STRINGER.

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From The Quarterly Review,
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS.1

66

IT is now just eighty-one years since the publication of Waverley," and nearly sixty-three since the author was laid among the dust of his ancestors in the Abbey of Dryburgh. During Scott's lifetime his novels on the whole suffered no loss of popularity, though the last were less admired than the first. After a time they very naturally ceased to be so much talked of, and, as new writers appeared upon the scene, ceased perhaps to be so much read. But that has only been the fate of all our great classics, Shakespeare and Dryden, Pope and Addison, Fielding and Smollett, Dickens and Thackeray. Nobody thinks the fact any proof that they were overrated in their own day, or that they do not still deserve all that their contemporaries thought of them. So with the Waverleys. There they still stand, as distinct a land-mark in our literary history as the Shakespearian dramas; like these, without an equal; and, like these, never to be repeated.

not called the Wizard of the North for nothing; and the publication of a new edition of the novels in some fifty handsome volumes, enriched with introductory essays by Mr. Andrew Lang, shows conclusively that their reputation is not upon the wane.

The completion of the Border edition affords a convenient opportunity for indulging in some further speculations on the character of the spell which has thus defied the whole armory of wit. After the lapse of many years, when we stand far enough off from the Waverleys to see them in perspective and in their relation to other works of kindred genius, we hope to escape the charge of repeating only a thrice-told tale. Mr. Lang strikes the right note in his frequent comparisons between Scott and Shakespeare, and in his brief reference to the significance of the fact dwelt on at greater length by Professor Masson, that Scott was the first novelist who was a poet. But neither seems to see quite all that it implies, or its bearing on the great work which Scott was appointed to perform. Mr. Lang has had access to the manuscripts and other material now preserved at Abbotsford; but they have not yielded much in the way of novelty. They have enabled him to correct a mistake made by Lockhart in reference to "St. Ronan's Well." With this exception we have not observed any important additions which he has made to our knowledge of the history and progress of the Waverleys. Still the essays are very interesting, and we only wish the illustrations were half as good.

The measure of their power and their beauty may be found in the severity of the criticism, which they have not only survived, but survived without the slightest depreciation. Inconsistencies, repetitions, gross improbabilities, tedious introductions, hurried and perplexed conclusions, faults of construction, neglect of facts, historical mistakes, false archæology, have all been proved against the author of "Waverley," and have left him exactly where he was. The only two books in the English language which have resisted similar attacks are the Before proceeding to the main object Bible and Shakespeare. Against all of this paper, it will be necessary to three the keenest intellects and most take into account the circumstances learned commentators have dashed which were in Scott's favor when the themselves in vain. There is a power publication of the Waverleys began. in all three of them from which these At the commencement of the present attacks rebound harmlessly, like the century the novel had by no means arrows from De Bracy's helmet on the attained that high rank in our literaramparts of Torquilstone. Scott was ture which it holds at the present day. 1 The Border Edition of the Waverley Novels. The historical novel was hardly known With Introductory Essays and Notes by Andrew at all, or known only through writers Lang, supplementing those of the author. Illus- of a very inferior order, who seldom trated by more than Two Hundred and Fifty new and original Etchings by eminent Artists. Lon- satisfied the demands of good sense and good taste. Throughout the eigh

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don, 1892-94.

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