ages; and, like Caroline of Brunswick, when But it is time to end my gossiping record. in Italy, she could eat with a double relish I will only add, that there have been not the dish which she had herself cooked. Anne only queens unqueened by marriage, but died, as she had lived, placidly, and in a many royal marriages which must have inmatter-of-fact way, at Chelsea, in 1557. She creased the number of heraldic anomalies. made no parade of sentiment, and appeared Thus Charlemagne. had two consorts, but to be desirous of passing away without mak- neither of them was raised to the rank of ing or exciting remark. She had appeared empress; and Mary Stuart, the widow of occasionally at young Edward's court, but Francis II., married two gentlemen, neither she had not been seen in public since the of whom was king. The mother of Francis coronation of Mary, to which ceremony she I., Louisa of Savoy, in her widowhood, es and the Princess Elizabeth rode in the same poused Rabaudange, her own maître d'hotel; coach. The Lady Anne caused more "talk" and Queen Elizabeth would have been very after death than she had done living, for, by glad of an excuse to marry her own Master her will, it was found that Cromwell's of the Horse. But these could not be deProtestant princess had become a professed scribed as such mesalliances as kings have Papist. entered into. Thus Christian IV. of Denmark married Christina Monck, and made her Duchess of Holstein; and Frederick IV. made a queen of the "demoiselle "Ravenalm. Denmark affords other examples, and that very recently, of similar connections. Victor Amadeus too espoused a Marchioness of St. Sebastian; and similar instances might be cited from other countries; but this would be commencing a new subject, and going beyond the limits of that connected with m queened queens. J. DORAN. The cloistered queens hardly come into the category of unqueened ladies, for honors little short of what was due to royalty, and greater than were usually paid in convents. appear to have been rendered to them. I have said that Mrs. Cromwell was as good a queen and ex-queen as any of them. When she fled, after the downfall of her son Richard, she carried off a few valuables, to which the Crown laid claim, as "his Majesty's goods," and seized without ceremony at a fruiterer's warehouse in Thames-street. ANTIQUITY OF THE POLKA: A NOTE FOR THE LADIES. The description of the lavolta in Sir John Davies' poem on dancing, The Orchestra (1596), shows that it must have closely resembled the dance which we fondly boast of as one of the great inventions of the nineteenth century. It runs as follows: "Yet is there one, the most delightful kind, And still their feet an anapest do sound; The "anapest" is conclusive; it points exactly was none for the lavolts; for it is classed among Wherein that dancer greatest praise has won, To this valuable historical parallel I may add that the galliard and coranto also were apparently danced ad libitum (observing only a particular measure), just as our waltz and galop also are: "For more diverse and more pleasing show, With passages uncertain to and fro, ΤΗΣ beak ; and by LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 604.-22 DECEMBER, 1855. From the Quarterly Review. Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox. Edited by Lord John Russell. Vols I. and II. London, 1853. THE time has perhaps arrived when Englishmen,may regard, not indeed without predilections, but freed from such passions as forbid a calm survey of the grounds on which those predilections have been formed, the characters of men who commanded the confidence or excited the dread of our contending grandsires. Political interests are invested in new combinations of party,- from the eternal problems of civilization new corollaries are drawn, since Fox identified his name with the cause of popular freedom, and Pitt was hailed as the representative of social order. his familiar letters render yet more transparent his amiable and winning qualities, and the graces of his cultivated and affluent genius, so, on the other, they compel our attention the more to his signal defects as the leader of a party or the councillor of a nation. But though in detail criticism may suggest remarks not without novelty or instruction, the salient attributes of the man, regarded as a whole, will remain the same; and the additional light thrown upon the portrait does not provoke the question whether or not it be placed at its proper height upon the wall. Far less clear to the discernment of the last age was the character of Pitt; and even in our day, men, wondering that genius should have been so long fortunate, have but little examined the Statesmen are valued while living, less ac- properties and causes which made the fortune cording to the degree of their intellect than a necessary consequence of the genius. In to its felicitous application to the public exi- the demeanor of Mr. Pitt, à certain stately gencies, or the prevalent opinions. Time, like reserve baffled the ordinary eye; in his polaw, admits no excuse for the man who mis-litical action there was a guiding tendency understands it. Hence, in our estimate of towards practical results, which is liable to contemporaries, we pass with abrupt versatil- misconstruction by the ordinary intelligence. ity from one extreme to the other: "Mors It was his fate to incur, from his earliest ultima linea rerum est " death must deter- manhood, those grave responsibilities which mine the vanishing point in the picture before separate the minister charged with the destiwe can estimate the relative size of each ob- nies of a nation from the theorist in legisla ject expressed on the canvas. tion, who, free to contend for what he deems In examining the Memorials and Corres- good in the abstract, is not bound to consider pondence of Mr. Fox, recently edited by the how and when to effect it. Hence, so little most distinguished of his surviving disciples, was known of Mr. Pitt out of his own chosen our eye often turns from the prominent hero circle, in private, that Mr. Fox speaks of him to linger where an opening in the group that "as no scholar.' surrounds bim vouchsafes a glimpse of his the supporters of the majestic minister, who lofty antagonist; and strange does it seem to cheered his awful irony or imperial declamaus that so much in the character and career tion, could have believed that he had ever of Mr. Pitt has been left to the mercy of been the gayest of gay companions met to commentators, who could not fail to misinter-sup in the hostelry of Eastcheap, and vie pret the one from the hostility they professed with each other in apt quotations from Shakto the other. In securing from future ages speare. On the other hand, in his public an impartial judgment, Mr. Fox has this character so little have his true opinions striking advantage, that, perhaps less than been subjected to candid investigation, that any of our great public men, do his actions he has been represented as an apostate from need the investigation of latent causes, or his idiosyncrasies require much skill in analysis or extensive acquaintance with mankind. It was his notable attribute to lay himself open on all sides, whether to applause or to reproach. And thus, while, on the one hand, DCIV. LIVING AGE. VOL. XI. 45 And few indeed among popular freedom and a champion of absolute rule; while Lord Holland would kindly mitigate his guilt as one or the other by the charitable assurance that Pitt had very few fixed principles at all. He has been accused of making war for the cause of the Bourbons; the Bourbons accused him of ignoring their gether retired in 1768. Infirmity and disease cause altogether. He has been charged with grew upon him. He was much confined to prolonging the war to prop his selfish ambi- his room. He had leisure to form the mind tion almost at every hazard; while, fresh and inspire the ambition of his favorite son. from the Malmesbury Correspondence, Lord It was not only in scholastic studies that Brougham invites us to notice how "sincere- the grand old man encouraged the boy's nat ly desirous he was of making peace with the ural eagerness to excel; it was not enough French Directory almost at any price." Ac- even in childhood to read and to remember. cording to Mr. Macaulay, Pitt was a wretch- Lord Chatham early instilled those two habits ed financier; while Lord John Russell laments of mind which call from the inert materials that no junction between Fox and Pitt al- of learning the active uses, of purpose, the relowed the nation to see "the one adorning productive vitality of original deductions, and advising his country in foreign affairs, the habits to observe and to reflect. He led the other applying to the management of our the young student to talk openly and boldly finances the economical principles of Smith upon every subject, and to collate his first and the wise frugality of Sully." It may impressions with a statesman's practical exwell be worth while to re-examine a charac-perience. The exceeding tenderness which ter thus carelessly rated, thus ill compre- the great Earl, so imperious in public life, exhended, and to ascertain what really were hibited to his son, appears in the letters Lord those qualities which, in a time unparelleled Chatham addressed to William at the early for the grandeur of its public men, raised age of fourteen. They have all the playful Mr. Pitt to a power pre-eminent over all. kindliness of feeling, all the yearning affection And, although there is no great general anal- of a mother's with just enough of the ogy between the circumstances that now sur- father's unconscious greatness, to sustain, round us or the dangers that threaten, and masculine ambition, and animate the sense of the stormier attributes of the time in which duty, not by dry admonitions but by hopeful Mr. Pitt achieved his fame, still in the prose- praise: "Your race of manly virtue (he cution of a war in which great blunders have writes to this boy of fourteen) is now begun, been committed and lofty reputations have and may the favor of Heaven smile upon the fallen into obloquy and odium-suggestions noble career. How happy, my loved boy, is not without their value may arise from the it that your mamma and I can tell ourselves contemplation of a character which inspired there is at Cambridge one without a beard, the public confidence in proportion to the de- and all the elements so mixed in him, that gree of the public peril. Nature might stand up and say, 'This is a man." William Pitt, the second son of Lord Chatham, was born on the 28th of May, 1759. Such words, and from such a parent, might Like his great rival Mr. Fox, and unlike great not only stimulate all the energies of a genermen in general, his childhood was remarkable ous son, but they serve, perhaps, to account for precocity of intellect. Of his two broth- for that remarkable conviction in his own ers, one was destined to the army, the other powers, that firm. quality of self-esteem so neto the navy. William was selected for the cessary in public life, which from first to last career of the bar and the senate. From the was the distinctive peculiarity of William Pitt. age of six to fourteen, educated at home un-Nor was it only by this wise familiarity of conder the eye of Lord Chatham, all his faculties versation and intercourse that Lord Chatham were trained towards development in public mechanically educated his son towards the life. During those eight years the popularity adoption of his own career. He accustomed of the elder Pitt had rapidly declined. The the boy to recite aloud, and, no doubt, took great commoner had passed to the House of occasion to inculcate those arts of oratory 80 Lords. He had formed that motley and feeble difficult to acquire in later life -the distinct cabinet, made familiar to posterity by the ex-ness of elocution, the modulated change of quisite satire of Burke, to which he had con- voice, the by-play of look and of gesture, in tributed nothing save his name, in the defence which Lord Chatham himself was the most of which, to borrow Chesterfield's brief defi- accomplished master of modern times. nition, "he was only Earl of Chatham and was, perhaps, the conviction that the arts of no longer Mr. r. Pitt," and from which he alto-oratory are closely akin to those of the stage It that led Lord Chatham to encourage William the pleasures that allure the young men from before he went to the University, not only to eighteen to twenty. Even then, however, write a play in verse, but to take a part in his tutor tells "that his manners were formed its performance. Yet more useful, perhaps, and his behavior manly.” His converthan the performance of the play was its com-sational powers were already considerable, position in verse. Rarely, indeed, has it hap- and his range of study was singularly wide pened that an eminent orator has obtained and comprehensive. Even then, too, his distinction as a poet; but rarely also has it habits indicated the bias of the future orator. happened that an eminent orator has not The barber who attended him, on approachindulged in verse-making. No other study ing the oak door, frequently overheard him leads to the same choiceness of selection in declaiming to himself within; and at a yet words, or enforces the same necessity to earlier age he had been accustomed to listen condense thought into a compact compass. to the debates in the House of Commons, and Bolingbroke, Chatham, Burke, Fox, Sheridan, repeat to his father the general purport of Pitt, Canning-all made verses at one time the arguments on either side. A severe of their lives, though Sheridan and Canning illness attacked him soon after his entrance alone, of that immortal seven, have left us at the University, and much interfered with cause to regret that they did not cultivate in his residence during the first three years, but verse any uses, not rigidly confined to the does not seem to have greatly interrupted his embellishment of prose. Nor did Lord educational progress. There were these reChatham neglect to exercise an influence over markable characteristics both in the quality the direction of William's graver studies. of his learning and the mind that was applied The Earl prudently, indeed, left to professional to it. Although not fond of composition in teachers the legitimate routine in the classic the dead languages, nor ever attaining to that authors, but he made it his particular desire perfection in the elegant pastime of adapting that Thucydides, the eternal manual of states- modern thoughts to ancient tongues, which men, should be the first Greek book which is the favorite academical test of scholarhis son read after coming to college; "the ship, he yet devoted especial and minute care only other wish,' says Bishop Tomline to detect the differences of style in the classic (William's college preceptor) "ever expressed authors; and we are told by his tutor that by his lordship relative to Mr. Pitt's studies" his diligent application to Greek literature was, that I would read Polybius with him." had rendered the knowledge of that language But to William himself Lord Chatham's liter-so correct and extensive that if a play of ary recommendations were less restricted, and Menander or Eschylus, or an ode of Pindar, they directed him to the study not only of had been suddenly found, he would have the historical and political masterpieces of understood it as soon as any professed England, but also of the logical arrangement scholar." and decorous eloquence which characterize the literature of the national church. The sermons of Barrow especially seemed to Lord Chatham "admirably calculated to furnish the copia verborum." * Lord Wellesley confirms this authority by his own, which carries with it more weight. That indisputable scholar, whose classical compositions may bear no disparaging comparison with Milton's and Gray's, says of In 1773, when little more than fourteen, Pitt, in maturer life, "He was perfectly William went to Pembroke Hall, in the accomplished in classical literature, both Latin University of Cambridge. It was, perhaps, and Greek.' "With astonishing facility an advantage to his moral habits, and to his he applied the whole spirit of ancient learning undivided attention to study, that he was so to his daily use." Lord Grenville has often much younger than his contemporaries. A declared that "Mr. Pitt was the best Greek boy of fourteen could scarcely participate in Barrow's amplitude of style is not unfrequently dis ... scholar he ever conversed with." Yet he had not habituated himself in boyhood to construe cernible in Pitt. But Barrow's more poetical attributes- classical authors in the ordinary way, viz., his bursts of passionate fervor-his glowing use of personification-his felicity in adapting high thoughts to sonorous literally, and word by word, "but read several expressions, appear more congenial to Chatham's style of eloquence than that of his son. There are parts in Barrow sentences in the original, and then gave the which we could well fancy Chatham to have spoken. For translation of them, interpreting with almost instance, the sublime passage beginning, "Charity is a right noble and worthy thing," &c. intuitive quickness the most difficult passages in the most difficult author; " a peculiarity better for active life, and went no farther. which evinces the tendency to generalize and He said himself, and truly," that he found express details by the comprehension of the their uses later, not merely from the actual whole, rather than arrive more slowly at the knowledge conveyed, but rather from the whole through the detached examination of habit of close attention and patient investigadetails. Thus his observation was searching tion." So also in metaphysics. He seems and careful; but it was more directed to to have contented himself with a thorough essentials than minutiæ. He took great knowledge of Locke's "Essay on the Human pleasure in philological disquisitions and the Understanding," of which he formed a comtrue niceties of language; little pleasure in plete and correct analysis. "He indicated no the lesser exercise of acuteness, that would inclination to carry his metaphysical studies amend a trivial error in a doubtful text; farther." In other words, it was the nature great pleasure in studying the peculiar means of his mind to adopt such studies as could by which poets obtain effect in expression; collaterally serve the vocation of an accomlittle pleasure in analyzing the laws of the plished statesman; to halt from those studies metre they employed. His mind, in short, where they deviated into directions in which was critical only so far as criticism was ne- they would naturally demand the whole man; cessary to the object in view; and in the and out of all researches to select by prefertastes of his studious boyhood he evinced that ence those which would furnish the largest preference to the practical, that strong seizure outlines of valuable ideas to the use of an inof some definite purpose, in which are to be tellect rather simple than refining; rather found the main secret of his after greatness, positive than subtle; rather grasping at Truth and of some of the defects and failings with where she emerged into the open space than which that greatness was inseparably blend- stealing through the labyrinth to surprise her ed. He acquired what would now be called in her cell. We must be pardoned for these but an elementary knowledge of mathematics and natural philosophy. His tutor, indeed, thinks that he would have made a wonderful progress in pure mathematics, had his inclination to that abstruse science been indulged. This we venture to doubt. No test of the capacities requisite for mastery in the more recondite regions of abstract philosophy Thus trained and prepared, William Pitt is established by a readiness in the solution entered into life too soon his own master. of elementary problems. There are few He had attained the age of nineteen when his logical minds which the clear deductions of father died. In 1780 he was called to the Euclid do not strengthen and delight. But Bar, and went the Western Circuit. In the for achievements in science, as the minute same year he lost his eldest sister, Lady Mainvestigator, the subtle discoverer, we ap- hon, and his brother James, of whom he says, prehend that qualities are required the very in a letter to his former tutor, "he had everyopposite of those which in William Pitt thing that was most desirable and promising shunned all results that were not broad and - everything that I could love and admire; palpable-employed genius to heighten and and I feel the favorite hope of my mind exadorn the robust substance of common sense, tinguished by this untimely blow. Let me, and by adherence to reasonings the most however (he adds), assure you that I am too familiar, or appeal to passions the most tried in affliction not to be able to support elementary, convinced the plain understand- myself under it." Whether from the desire ing of a popular assembly, and commanded to distract his thoughts from such causes for the heart of a free nation, which a similar policy on certain measures adopted by a minister who had philosophized more, and felt less, would have driven into terrible references to certain points in the earlier education and tendencies of this famous man, which may seem too familiar to reiterate; since our readers may thus arrive at perceptions into the nature of his general intellect which do not seem to have been suggested to his biographers. grief, or from the native buoyancy of spirit which belongs to genius in youth, it was in the winter of that year that we find him supping nightly at Goosetree's club, more amus ing than professed wits, entering with energy William Pitt went just so far into mathe- into the different amusements of gay companmatics and natural science as fitted him the lions, and displaying intense earnestness in revolt. |