Buchanan is the person naturally hinted at | in the way in which Mr. Burton writes in as the author of the contents of the casket, the passages which we have just been quothaving been the first to draw public attentioning, do not occupy themselves with the kind to them. But if we suppose him morally capa- of antiquarian details, primæval, architectble of such an act, it is pretty clear that it did ural, legal, of any sort indeed, which take not come within his intellectual capacity, extensive as that was. The little domesticities up so large a space in his earlier volumes. in the letters would not suit the majestic march We suspect that this completeness has some of his pen. In the Detection, to which he connexion with Mr. Burton's position as a appended the documents, he shows that, had he Scottish historian. We do not find it, we prepared these himself, he would certainly have do not expect it in historians of England or overdrawn them. In fact, in that philippic the France. We are not sure that we should great scholar and poet shows that, although he think it in place if we did find it. Yet, may have known politics on a large scale, he was not versed in the intricacies of the human ton has made between the two possible ways once accepting the choice which Mr. Burheart. Everything is with him utterly and pal- of treating his whole subject, they seem, in bably vile and degrading, without any redeem- his history, perfectly in place. Has not ing or mitigating element. this something to do with the peculiar position of Scotland? Scotland-in this re Mr. Burton had himself just before said, in spect like Ireland, though in most points so a most remarkable passage: Suppose it to have been settled in conclave that such a set of letters were to be forged, who was there with the genius to accomplish the feat? Nowhere else, perhaps, has the conflict of the three passions, love, jealousy, and hatred, been so powerfully stamped in utterance. Somewhat impoverished though it may be in the echo of a foreign medium, we have here the reality of that which the masters of fiction have tried in all ages, with more or less success, to imitate. They have striven to strip great events of broad, vulgar, offensive qualities, and to excite sensations which approach to sympathy with human imperfections. And, indeed, these letters stir from their very foundation the sensations which tragic genius endeavours to arouse. We cannot, in reading them, help a touch of sympathy, or it may be compassion, towards the gifted being driven in upon the torrent of relentless passions, even though the end to which she drifts is the breaking of the highest laws, human and divine. A touch of tenderness towards those illustrious persons who show their participation in the frailty of our common nature by imperfections as transcendent as their capacities, is one of the mysterious qualities of the human heart, and here it has room for indulgence. In fact it is the shade that gives impressiveness to the picture. With all her beauty and wit, her political ability and her countless fascinations, Mary, Queen of Scots, would not have occupied nearly the half of her present place in the interest of mankind had the episode of Bothwell not belonged to her story. These are the kind of things which we confess that we hardly expected from the early parts of Mr. Burton's book, highly praiseworthy as they are in their own way. But perhaps the remarkable thing is, after all, what we have called the completeness of his book. As a rule, men who can write unlike is not quite a nation, and yet is something more than a province. A country in this sort of position awakens a peculiar sort of patriotism, one far more extensive and far more susceptible than the patriotism of either nations or provinces. We have no doubt that we have sometime or other quoted the remark, but it is quite worth quoting twice, that an Englishman never stops to think that he is not a Scotchman, while the Scotchman always bears about with him the distinct remembrance that he is not an Englishman. Does not this ever-conscious feeling of nationality lead a man who studies the history of his country at all to study it in a more complete way, to look at it in all its aspects, to make it his business to find out all that he can about everything that concerns it? Of course this may be done under the guidance of mere provincial prejudice. But, if it is done in an impartial and enlightened way, as in the case of Mr. Burton, it produces the happiest results. We have tried Mr. Burton on the points on which we should naturally try any Scottish writer. In the matter of King Edward, we get out of him as much as we have any right to expect; in the matter of Queen Mary, we have simply to read and admire. But these are, after all, only two points out of many. The variety of subjects dealt with in Mr. Burton's book is really amazing. It is an odd change of subject to pass from Queen Mary to the Druids. But Mr. Burton's remarks in his first volume on the way which people use the words Druid and Druidism as a mere shelter for ignorance, are just as good in their way as his remarks on the Casket Letters, and they display exactly the same power of thoroughly appre ciating evidence: in To all inquiries as to the religion from which the inhabitants of North Britain were converted when they became Christians, there has generally been an easy answer, Of course it was from Druidism. That term has been used in history much in the same way as the names of general but undefined causes have been used in physics to bring out a complete result without the trouble of inquiry. It is thus that we have had the theories of antipathies and affinities, animal spirits, the sensorium, phlogiston, and the like; and thus too have been frequently employed such terms as electric currents and magnetic influences. of mystery - how to account for the perverse ingenuity which framed such a baseless system, and for the marvellous credulity that accepted it as solid truth. In such a book as this, if we point out a few slips, we feel sure that the author will simply take them as hints for its still further improvement. "We do not know," says Mr. Burton, "in what sort of tongue the Carthagenians [why this unusual spelling ?], the rivals of Rome herself, discoursed" (i. 197). We need not go to the Ponulus. The name Hannibal alone, the heathen form of John, shows that they spoke something very like Hebrew. We will not dispute about Picts, but we are distinctly surprised at Mr. Burton's giving the least ear to the notion that they were Teutonic. "Thursday is not from Thor, a It is appropriate to all these solvents of dif. ficulties, which have passed current from time immemorial, and are accepted without examination, that there are no strict boundaries to their sphere of application. Whenever the difficulty arises, the solvent is at hand without question whether its application has limits which have been passed. What is said of old about the Druids is applicable to the Celts, as distinguish-word which means Thunder and was the ed from the Germans. Those who have gone into the causes of Druidism attribute its vast power and mysterious influence to the special proneness of the Celtic tribes to subject themselves to the influence of some priesthood, while the Gothic people were shy of any intervention by human beings between themselves and the mighty deities they idolized. Yet in modern literature we find Druidism applied to the Gothic as readily as to the Celtic nations, and that although there are full means of being acquainted with the religion of those nations, and of knowing that it was something entirely different from the system brought into shape under the name of Druidism. Modern authors, succeeding each other, have filled up the details of that system, and made it almost as complete as the Roman hierarchy. We have Archdruids and simple Druids; some set to this kind of work, some to that. We are told of the doctrines that they taught, and especially what they thought of the immortality of the soul. We are told of their various arrangements for exercising the influence of mystery on their deluded followers, and for preserving in profound secrecy the traditions of their order and the sources of their influence. Their costume. their pomp and ceremonies, are accurately described. They were long-bearded men clothed in white, and went forth with golden sickles to cut the mistletoe at the appointed hour of doom. We have their temples among us in a very distinct condition, with the altars on which they offered up human sacrifices, and the mystic signs which they left on the rock pillars which of old stood in the centres of their sacred groves. After reading all that is thus piled up with the solemn gravity of well-founded knowledge, it is positively astounding to look back and see on how small and futile a foundation it all When we are told of the interesting mysteries that surround the functions of this potent priesthood, we are led to a real source rests. name of the thundering god"" (i. 233). But things like these are, in a book like this, mere spots on the sun. In a book which contained nothing else they might be serious. Our only regret is that we have not space for several more extracts from various parts of Mr. Burton's volumes. In all the latter part especially, his knowledge of human nature comes out as strongly as his power of dealing with historical evi dence. We recommend the book to all historical students, and we shall look with anxiety for the remaining volumes. From the Saturday Review. THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. * Necklace, but he has given us both the story and the evidence at full length for the first time, and, it is fair to add, in a very readable form. Indeed his tale has all the interest of a romance which is too strange not to be true. We could wish he had been content to use Mr. Carlyle's materials without being so fond, both in the text and the headings of chapters, of imitating his style, which, however striking, is-or at least HISTORICAL criticism, fas it is now unwas originally even in its author an affecderstood, may almost be called the creation tation, and in his imitators becomes simply of the present century, and in the hands of intolerable. When Mr. Vizetelly allows German writers it has done wonders in the himself to write naturally, his English is rehabilitation of injured characters and the simple and clear enough; and this makes reversal of unrighteous judgments. This us regret the more that it should be dishas perhaps especially been the case as refigured by so many lapses into Carlylese, gards what were once considered, in the and by the occasional introduction of such worst and most exclusive sense, the "dark questionable grammar as 66 a person who ages," but which are now restored to their lived in the same house that she did, and proper place in common estimation as an whom she knew was a native of that place." important stage in the social and moral ed- These are minor blemishes in what is really ucation of modern Europe. One result, a good book on the whole. The most origihowever, of the discovery of this new sci-nal portion of it is the summing up of the ence has been to foster a kind of monomania for whitewashing soiled reputations, which of course implies blackening a good many that were previously thought spotless; and thus we are gravely bidden to respect in Richard III. a bright example of the animus paternus in an uncle, and in Henry VIII. a model husband, though of somewhat frigid temperament. Even in these extreme cases there is usually, though not always, some force in the appeal against the traditional verdict. Neither Richard nor Henry, for instance, are so black as they have often been painted; but there is still every reason for believing that the former murdered his nephews, and no sort of doubt that the latter divorced and decapitated his wives in a way hardly consistent with a high standard of marital excellence. On the other hand, Mr. Lewes has entirely failed to convince us that Nero was not the "monster" contemporary historians sent him. The battle is still raging over the grave, or rather the casket, of Mary Stuart. Very different is the case of Marie-Antoinette which is brought before us in these volumes. Few prominent personages in history have been so cruelly and so persistently assailed, and fewer still have won so complete a posthumous triumph. repre Mr. Vizetelly has not added much to the substance of what is contained in the fourth volume of Mr. Carlyle's Miscellaneous Essays on the too famous story of the Diamond *The Story of the Diamond Necklace. By Henry Vizetelly. 2 vols. London: Tinsley Brothers. 1867. evidence at the end, to which we shall have to refer again presently, and especially the exhaustive analysis and refutation of M. Louis Blanc's adverse arguments. To the concluding words no reader will be likely to refuse his assent:- "Time, that rights all things, is at last doing Marie-Antoinette justice; and she whom patriotism accused, and demagogism condemned, humanity [we should rather have said justice] has well nigh absolved." The actual story of the necklace may be told in very few words; that it should ever have received the interpretation which darkened the last years, and was long suffered to stain the memory, of the unfortunate Queen, can only be explained by the critical state of affairs at the period, and the intense bitterness of party spirit. There are none of whom it may be said, with greater truth, Delicta majorum immeritus lues, than of Louis XVI. and his unhappy consort. The following passage shows how well the soil was prepared for the seeds of calumny so artfully sown by the real culprit in the plot, whose superlative knavery elevated her for the time into a heroine, and has secured for the name of an unscrupulous and abandoned woman, who knew no motive but the grossest selfishness, and no aim but the gratification of her ambition or her lust, an historical connexion with the outbreak of the French Revolution:: From the day she became Queen, to the very hour of her death, and even after the grave had closed over her headless corse, the unhappy 27 ไ dy 26 Marie-Antoinette was fated to be the victim of calumny. Her youthful levity was magnified into natural vice. Her most innocent amusements were made the objects of dark suspicion. Her friendships were so many criminal attachments. From Marly to Versailles, and from Versailles to Marly, slander pursued her. It penetrated the groves of Trianon, and insinuated that secret orgies, rivalling those of the "Parc aux cerfs," were carried on in this now favourite retreat. Indecent pamphlets referring to her, written by hireling scribes, were circulated all over France. Libels against her were even forged in the police bureau. Scandalous songs were thrown in the "Eil-de-Boeuf," at the King's feet. Scandalous libels were placed under his dinner-napkin. Courtiers repeated the last foul epigram, the last lying report against the Queen, in the royal ante-chambers, whispered it and chuckled over it even in the Queen's presence; carried it from Versailles or Marly, post haste to Paris, to the different hostile salons, to the green-rooms of the theatre and the opera, and to the cafés, thence to be disseminated all over the capital, even to the halles; carried it to their country châteaux, and laughed over it at their dinner-tables, whence it spread among their tenantry and the inhabitants of the adjacent towns. The Countess de la Motte was the eldest daughter of Jacques de Saint-Remi de Valois, an illegitimate descendant of Henry II. of France," high and puissant lord and knight," and titular heir of many broad domains, but in actual life a beggar, who, after six months' imprisonment for debt, died in a ward of the Hôtel Dieu at Paris. Jeanne, the future Countess, and her younger sister, were turned out by their mother to beg in the streets; and it may literally be said of her that from this time to the end of her life her face was her fortune, being, according to the description Mr. Carlyle is so fond of quoting, "not beautiful, but with a certain piquancy." The children attracted the benevolent notice of the Marchioness de Boulainvilliers, who adopted them, and made them inmates of her own home. The younger girl soon after died, but Jeanne, after being some years at school, was apprenticed to a mantua-maker in Paris; and being obliged from ill-health to throw up her engagement, was subsequently sent to board in a convent, in order to place her beyond the reach of the Marquis's improper attentions. Not long afterwards she fell in at Bar-sur-Aube with Count de la Motte, whom she married after a short flirtation, neither of them having anything but their wits to live upon; and to make the most of that somewhat precarious means of livelihood, they established themselves on a fifth, floor in Paris. Here began her discreditable connexion with her accomplice and dupe in the diamond necklace affair, his Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop Prince Louis de Rohan - or, as Mr. Carlyle prefers more laconically to style him, " Eminence de Rohan "-at this time nearly fifty years of age. One of the most noticeable features, we may observe, in this strange story is the light it throws incidentally on the almost incredible moral depravity of the aristocratic, and especially the higher clerical, society of the period in France. The Countess, who was always very far from being " ashamed to beg," contrived to get a good deal out of various wealthy potentates on the strength of her royal descent and her personal attractions; but her chief almoner was the Cardinal, who was madly in love with her, and whose letters, of which several hundreds were burnt just before her apprehension by the police, were, according to M. Beugnot, who had looked over them, so filthy that no man who respected himself would choose to read them through. But even the Cardinal's lavish generosity was insufficient to keep her exchequer supplied, and accordingly she hit upon the ingenious device of at once enriching herself and still further captivating her lover, whose great ambition it was to recover the good graces of the Court, by means of the diamond necklace. This necklace, containing 629 rare diamonds, had been ordered by Louis XV. of the Court jewellers, Böhmer and Bassenge, for Madame du Barry; but the King died before it was paid for, and thenceforward it was a terrible incumbrance to the jewellers, who vainly tried to dispose of it, first to Marie-Antoinette, and then to various European sovereigns, and were meanwhile unable themselves to pay the debts contracted for the purchase of the diamonds.. The Countess having completely deceived the Cardinal, by a series of forged letters, as from the Queen-the work of one Rètaux de Villette, another of her admirers -into the belief that Marie-Antoinette was ready to take him into favour, at last arranged the bold stroke of a midnight meeting in the gardens of Versailles between the Queen and the Cardinal, the Queen being personated on the occasion by a Parisian courtesan, Mademoiselle d'Oliva, or Leguaz, who appears to have been strikingly like her in face. The next thing was to persuade the Cardinal and the jewellers that the Queen who had never seen her, but with whom she professed to be on terms of the closest intimacy- wished to purchase she was ever seen either with the Necklace it- If she was the necklace privately, making the Cardi- | thing of the facts, do we find the slightest accunal her agent for the purpose. They ea- sation against the Queen with regard to the gerly caught the bait, and in February, 1785, Diamond Necklace. No one has stated that the Cardinal having obtained the necklace from the jewellers on presenting a forged order signed "Marie-Antoinette de France," handed it over to the Countess for Her Majesty. Madame de la Motte of course lost no time in disposing of the diamonds for her own advantage, and the jewellers, after many vain attempts to extract payment from her or from the Cardinal, at length brought the affair before the notice of the Queen, and the bubble burst. On the 15th of August, the feast of the Assumption, Cardinal de Rohan was arrested in full pontificals, when preparing to celebrate mass in the Royal chapel at Versailles, and a few days later the Countess and her accomplices were also lodged in the Bastile. The Cardinal was finally acquitted, though banished from the precincts of the Court. The Countess was condemned to be whipped, branded, and imprisoned for life; but in the following year she escaped to England, where she was killed at the age of thirtyfour, in August, 1791, by falling from a window two stories high from which she had jumped out to avoid the bailiffs who had come to seize her for debt; not however before she had left abundant materials, in her autobiography and her lying "Mé'moires Justificatifs," to sustain for long afterwards the odious and baseless calumnies against the Queen which she had so sedulously propagated on her trial and throughout her subsequent career. For the fate of her husband and the other minor characters in this extraordinary drama we must refer our readers to Mr. Vizetelly's pages, which will well repay a perusal. His summing up of the evidence, both negative and positive, which exculpates Marie-Antoinette from any complicity whatever with the scandalous intrigue in which she was represented as bearing so prominent a part, is admirable. One passage we must extract, on the force of the negative argument. After showing that the Countess must have been able to offer some shadow of proof of her alleged intimacy with the Queen, if it really existed, and that through all the revolutionary period some evidence against the Queeh would surely have been forthcoming, he proceeds: And yet not a scintilla of evidence, true or false, against the Queen has come to light. In none of the memoirs of the time, written by those who had opportunities of knowing some And if there is no evidence, neither is there any assignable motive for the Queen's desiring to obtain the necklace : It was certainly not for the purpose of wearing it, for no one ever pretended to have seen it on her person. It was not with the object of selling it piecemeal, to stave off some pressing pecuniary difficulty, for the De la Moites had the whole of the proceeds; and in none of the contradictory statements made by them did they ever pretend they were selling the diamonds on the Queen's behalf. The statement the Count made to the jewellers was, that he inherited the diamonds from his mother; then their joint statement was, that they sold them on behalf of the Cardinal; their final statement was, that they were a present to the Countess from the Queen, the wage in fact for the dishonourable service which she so unblushingly asserts she rendered to Marie-Antoinette. Supposing the Queen to have had some motive for possessing the Necklace which we cannot penetrate, would she have purchased it through such a doubtful pair of agencies as the Countess de la Motte and the Cardinal de Rohan? On the other hand there is direct evidence of the Countess de la Motte having herself disposed of far the greater part of the dia'monds; while at least seventeen of her own statements on her trial are contradicted, either by herself or by independent testimony. We carnot follow the author through his detailed examination of M. Louis Blanc's counter-assertions, but no doubt will exist among those who study the evidence here presented to them as to the verdict of history on this strange episode in the life of Marie-Antoinette. |