be, Miss Brontë can barely reach his elbow. My own personal impressions are that she is somewhat grave and stern, specially to forward little girls who wish to chatter; Mr. George Smith has since told me how she afterwards remarked upon my father's wonderful forbearance and gentleness with our uncalled-for incursions into the conversation. She sat gazing at him with kindling eyes of interest; lighting up with a sort of illumination every now and then as she answered him. I can see her bending forward over the table, not eating, but listening to what he said as he carved the dish before him. extra dish of biscuits was enough to mark the evening. We felt all the importance of the occasion; tea spread in the dining. room, ladies in the drawing-room; we roamed about inconveniently, no doubt, and excitedly, and in one of my excursions crossing the hall, I was surprised to see my father opening the front door with his hat on. He put his fingers to his lips, walked out into the darkness, and shut the door quietly behind him. When I went back to the drawing-room again, the ladies asked me where he was. I vaguely answered that I thought he was coming back. I was puzzled at the time, nor was it all I think it must have been on this very made clear to me till long years afteroccasion that my father invited some of wards, when one day Mrs. Procter asked his friends in the evening to meet Miss me if I knew what had happened once Brontë - for everybody was interested when my father had invited a party to and anxious to see her. Mrs. Crowe, the meet Jane Eyre at his house. It was one reciter of ghost-stories, was there. Mrs. of the dullest evenings she had ever spent Brookfield, Mrs. Carlyle, Mr. Carlyle him in her life, she said. And then with a self was there, so I am told, railing at good deal of humor she described the sitthe appearance of cockneys upon Scotch uation, the ladies who had all come expect mountain sides; there were also too many ing so much delightful conversation; and Americans for his taste "but the Ameri- the gloom and the constraint, and how cans were as God compared to the cock finally, overwhelmed by the situation, my neys says the philosopher. Besides the father had quietly left the room, left the Carlyles there were Mrs. Elliott and Miss house, and gone off to his club. The Perry, Mrs. Procter and her daughter, ladies waited, wondered, and finally demost of my father's habitual friends and parted also; and as we were going up to companions. In the recent life of Lord bed with our candles after everybody was Houghton I was amused to see a note gone, I remember two pretty Miss L.'s, in quoted in which Lord Houghton also was shiny silk dresses, arriving full of expecconvened. Would that he had been prestation. We still said we thought our ent! perhaps the party would have gone off better. It was a gloomy and a silent evening. Every one waited for the brilliant conversation which never began at all. Miss Brontë retired to the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then to our kind governess, Miss Truelock. The room looked very dark, the lamp began to smoke a little, the conversation grew dimmer and more dim, the ladies sat round still expectant, my father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to be able to cope with it at all. Mrs. Brookfield, who was in the doorway by the study, near the corner in which Miss Brontë was sitting, leaned forward with a little commonplace, since brilliance was not to be the order of the evening. "Do you like London, Miss Brontë?" she said; another silence, a pause, then Miss Brontë answers, "Yes and no" very gravely, and there the conversation drops. My sister and I were much too young to be bored in those days; alarmed, impressed we might be, but not yet bored. A party was a party, a lioness was a lioness; and, - shall I confess it?-at that time an father would soon be back, but the Miss L.'s declined to wait upon the chance, laughed, and drove away again almost immediately. Since writing the preceding lines, I have visited Jane Eyre land, and stayed in the delightful home where she used to stay with Mrs. Gaskell. I have seen signs and tokens of her presence, faint sketches vanishing away, the delicate writing in the beautiful books she gave that warm friend; and I have also looked for and re-read the introduction to "Emma," that "last sketch" and most touching chapter in the never-to-be-written book of Charlotte Brontë's happy married life. The paper is signed "W. M. T.;" it was written by the editor, and is printed in one of the very earliest numbers of the Cornhill Magazine. little hand, the great honest eyes; an impetuI remember the trembling little frame, the ous honesty seemed to me to characterize the woman. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us and rebuking our easy lives, our easy niorals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure and lofty and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such in our brief interview she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life so noble, so lonely—of that passion for truth— of those nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, and prayer; as one reads of the necessarily incomplete though most touching and admirable history of the heart that throbbed in this one little frame- of this one among the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this great earth-this great earth!-this little speck in the infinite universe of God, with what wonder do we think of to-day, with what awe await to-morrow, when that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear? As I write out what my father's hand has written my gossip is hushed, and seems to me like the lamp-smoke in the old drawing-room compared to the light of the summer's night in the street outside. ANNE RITCHIE. From The Speaker. ROYAL SURNAMES. THERE is a "Guelph Exhibition;" and a Guelph Exhibition is likely to call forth an amazing flood of one particular form of vain talk. In the days of William the Fourth, some very impertinent person thought it smart to talk of the king and queen as "Mr. and Mrs. Guelph." The impertinence was instructive; it showed that some people - very many people in truth - believed that the king had a surname, and that that surname was 66 Guelph." One does not know whether they have gone on either to think that the present queen changed that surname for some other when she married one whose name certainly was not Guelph, or to think that Prince Albert changed his surname, whatever it was, for that of her Majesty. That everybody must have a surname is by no means a new delusion. Perhaps Shakespeare himself was not free from it when he called Queen Gruach "Lady Macbeth." He hardly meant the title in the same way in which one now speaks of "Lady John' or Lady George." Many people seem unable to fancy a man without a hereditary surname. Yet there have been many ages and countries of the European world in which hereditary surnames have been unknown, and one class of people goes without them still. That is to say, those princely families which became princely before hereditary surnames came into universal use have never had any need to take a surname, because they are clearly enough distinguished from other people without any. Some princely houses have surnames; but that is because they had taken surnames before they became princely. Such was Tudor in England; such was Stewart, first in Scotland, then in England. When Charles the First at his trial was summoned as "Charles Stewart, king of England," the description was unusual, but it was strictly accurate. When the French revolutionists, in helpless imitation, summoned their king by the name of "Louis Capet," they made a ludicrous blunder. Charles was "Charles Stewart," because Stewart was his real surname, inherited from his grandfather, Henry Stewart. Lewis was not "Louis Capet, because "Capet "never was the hereditary surname of anybody. Charles's grandmother, Queen Mary, was equally Mary Stewart, as a descendant of that Robert Stewart who married the daughter of Robert Bruce-another king with a surname. The place-name, the name of hereditary office, Robert of Bruce, Robert the Steward, easily passed into a hereditary surname in the modern sense. But "Capet " was simply the personal surname or nickname of the king who was in some sort the founder of the dynasty. His nickname was therefore sometimes found convenient to mark the dynasty; people began to talk about "the Capets," and they at last fancied that Capet was the hereditary surname of the house. Other. wise there was no more reason for calling Lewis the Sixteenth "Louis Capet" than there was for calling him "Louis le Long," Louis le Bel," "Louis le Hardi," or any other nickname of any earlier king. The Guelphs, in the queer spelling that they have gradually come to, in their natural shape, the Welfs, are in a somewhat different case. We need not perplex ourselves to find out how the first man that was called Welf came by his name. There is a pretty story about Whelps in a basket, which anybody may believe if he chooses. The name is not more wonderful than many other names. A Duke Welf is not more startling than the patriarchal Caleb, than the Roman Catulus, than Can' Grande della Scala, who looks specially strange in his Latin shape of "Dominus Canis.' The difference between Welts and Capets is that there were real Welfs, and that there were no real Capets. A long line of nobles and princes, one after another, bore the name of Welf as their personal name. Their house came naturally to be spoken of as the house of the Welfs; their political party was known as the party of the Welfs. The name, famous as a party-name in Germany, became yet more famous in Italy. It took an Italian shape, and the "parte Guelfa" spoke to the heart of every citizen of Florence. Further, as "Welf" became "Guelf by a very natural process, "Guelf" has further become " Guelph by a very unnatural one. How Ulf became Ulphus," how Ligulf or Liulf became "Lyulph," how Guelf became "Guelph," must be left to those who have tender consciences about spelling, and who will let no man's name be written as he wrote it himself. Lord Macaulay talks of "the blood of the Guelphs," and he well may. No description could better mark the descent and history of the house. Yet to fancy that Guelph is a hereditary if anybody still really does so fancy it is just as great a blunder as that of the French revolutionists. To speak of any duke or king of the house as George or William Welf, Guelf, or Guelph, is quite as grotesque as to talk of "Louis Capet." surname Stewart" was the hereditary office of his forefathers, still not forgotten. He would have been "Stewart "in that sense if he had been the son of Bothwell or of Francis the Second. But if a son of Bothwell had come to the crown of England, we should surely know his house, not as Stewarts, but as Hepburns. 66 Capet never was a hereditary sur name; but the modern descendants of Hugh Capet seem to be taking to themselves hereditary surnames. The Spanish branch have long used the name of Bourbon in a way which comes very near to a surname. They use it constantly, in a way that our Tudors and Stewarts never used their surnames. And when the Duke of Aumale signs himself "Henri d'Orléans," that comes very near to a surname too; and a like question may some day arise among ourselves. The Dukes of York of the fifteenth century were the last men of royal descent in the male line who found that a surname would be convenient. Since then princes and their children have always died out in an aston. ishing way; all the male descendants of a king have been so near to the crown that the question of a surname has not again One or two more things may be said occurred. But let our imagination go on while we are on the subject of these to conceive the children of the tenth Duke names. Many, perhaps most, people of Connaught. Surely they will not be all fancy that Plantagenet was a hereditary princes, princesses, and royal highnesses. surname from the twelfth century on- Surely they will be Lord John and Lady wards. Scott talks about "Edith Plan- Mary, like the children of other dukes. tagenet," a very queer mixture of names, Only Lord John and Lady Mary what? though one has seen "Margaret Atheling," Doubtless, if the case occurs, the question which is queerer still. But no man, king will have been settled before the time of or otherwise, was ever called Plantagenet the tenth duke. The sovereign can confer as a hereditary surname till the fifteenth any title and precedence on anybody, and century. Then the Dukes of York found it is reasonably held that any man may that they wanted a surname, and they take any surname that he pleases. Mr. chose the nickname of their remote fore- Bugg was foolish only in changing so father, Count Geoffrey, known as Plan- ancient a name as Bugg for one so modern tagenet. There was no more reason for as Norfolk Howard. The Hunt who called calling themselves Plantagenet than for himself De Vere, and the Morris who calling themselves Bastard," "Lack-called himself Montmorency, were wiser land,' Longshanks," or any other nick- in their generation. Assuredly no law or 'name of any other forefather; only Plan- custom at present fixed can settle now tagenet certainly sounded better. It would what the younger children of the tenth be perfectly accurate to call the kings of Duke of Connaught will be called. the house of York "the Plantagenets," sovereign of that day may give them any just as we talk of the Tudors and the title that he chooses; they themselves Stewarts; only the name has been oddly may, like the Dukes of York in the fif carried back for three hundred years. teenth century take any surname that And people hardly distinguish between they choose. If they should choose to the use of the name Stewart as applied to take Guelph, then the impertinence of the the elder kings of Scotland and as applied days of William the Fourth will become a to those who were kings of England also. fact in the days of Edward the Eleventh James, Sixth and First, son of Henry and or Elizabeth the Third. The children of Mary Stewart, was proclaimed "Prince Lord John Guelph, if not promoted by and Stewart of Scotland " as well as king. | their very distant kinsman on the throne, 66 66 The 66 'Honorable." E. A. FREEMAN. of will assuredly be plain Mr. and Mrs. Le Graveur à l'eau-forte" and "L'AtGuelph, without even the epithet tente to the French nation were made in compliment to that statesman in November, 1881. We may, however, on the whole, be glad that, in spite of all temptations to adorn other vocations, Meissonier remained from first to last simply a painter. From The Saturday Review. THE death of Meissonier removes a most His work has come to be considered as the highest expression of a certain view of nature which is far from being as limited as some critics have alleged. It is true that Meissonier is not a colorist. The word cannot be used of a painter who ob. tains his effects by the positive elimination of color, whose reds are deliberately rendered by mud-tints, and his blues and greens by greys. But in most other directions his characteristics are so wide as almost to defy criticism. In light, in tone, in veracity of impression, in completeness of knowledge, he has no rival, even among those masters of the Low Countries whom he loved to emulate. The microscopic proportions of his pictures, his fondness for seventeenth and eighteenth century costumes, the realism that shocked his early critics, are no longer looked upon as detracting anything from his merit; for all eccentricities may easily be forgiven to an observation so precise and a touch so broad and true. His realism has always been inspired by great thoughts; it has never been vulgar nor mediocre. There are, perhaps, no French pictures of forty years ago which have suffered so little from the change of fashion as those of Meissonier. His artistic conscience, as has been well said, was inexorable. For his great effects It was the conviction that this great he trusted neither to memory nor to conpainter desired, above all things else, to struction, but, at vast expense and under glorify French art, and to prove himself a extreme difficulties, insisted on working sincere patriot, which won for Meissonier from nature. When he was painting that astonishing popularity which his old "1807," he bought a cornfield, and hired a age achieved. There were wonderful troop of cuirassiers to gallop over it, he legends about him, and some of them have himself riding at their side and noting the now proved to have been true. M. An- attitudes of men and horses. Then, and tonin Proust has written this week to a not until the field was in the right condiFrench paper to say that it is literally his- tion of corn ruined by cavalry, did Meistoric that on the 8th of September, 1870, sonier sit down before it to paint his Meissonier went to Gambetta and asked middle distance. A similar story is told to be made military prefect of Metz. of the ploughed and snow-covered field in Whether he would have served France "1814." It was his artistic conscience with success if this request had been which led him, as long ago as 1830, to granted may be doubtful, but certainly his break with the convention of the classic training, his audacity, and the breadth of school, and which kept him so consistently his conceptions might have made an ex-isolated from the passing fashions of cellent amateur fighting general of him. Gambetta, at all events, never ceased to try to make use of Meissonier in public life, and we now learn that the gifts of French art for sixty years. No one has ever used the model so faithfully and sincerely, and it is this, his invariable vision of the man inside the doublet or the coat of mail, which distinguishes him from all the ephemeral host of mere painters of costume. It is an interesting fact that he has left on record which of all his innumerable productions he himself preferred. His list of his own four favorite pictures consists of "La Rixe," "1807," "L'Attente," and "Le Graveur à l'eau-forte," and the study of these alone would teach us what Meissonier was. In the first of these "La Rixe " -the two young fellows flying at each other's throats, and scarcely held apart by their friends - we see Meissonier's gift for presenting violent action suddenly arrested in a composition superbly balanced, and yet natural and easy in the extreme. In "1807" we have the most triumphant and the most fiery of those battle-pieces, crowded with small figures in which Napoleon, without any undue emphasis, is given the central and inevitable place of honor. This is the type of those ambitious works in which Meissonier, carried away by his own de sire to reach perfection, attempted a completeness of plane upon plane, beyond the capacity of any eye but his own. Το another class belong his isolated subjectfigures, reading, etching, painting, smok ing, or merely sitting calmly in a rosecolored or a sky-blue coat. Throughout his life the muse of Meissonier, in the old phrase, brought forth none but male children. Much as he loved drapery and costume, he very seldom consented to draw a woman; when he did, as in the hostess in "La Halte," or the servantmaid in "La Culotte des Cordeliers," he succeeded just well enough to send us back contented to his troopers and his philosophes. Meissonier's unique position in the art of our time is very curious. He sprang out of nothing, full-armed, without a master; and he dies at eighty, the most honored and the most popular of French painters, without ever having had, in any serious sense, a pupil. He has been, like Cowley's Phoenix, "a vast spe cies alone." CURIOUS DISCOVERY IN THE STOUR. A correspondent writes: "A most interesting discovery has just been made at the old Cinque Port of Sandwich. The Stour, a river which has, perhaps, more frequently changed its course than any other English river, has lately entered an old channel near its confluence with Pegwell Bay, laying bare a wreck which has probably occupied its present position for several centuries. The vessel is one of foreign build, and the wood is in a fair state of preservation, owing to the fact that it has for many years been entirely embedded in the sand. On inspection it would appear that from time to time various attempts had been made to cut down the wreck, but the hull of the vessel is as yet pretty nearly intact. It is a matter of local history that a little over three hundred years ago, in the reign of Henry VIII., an Italian vessel, belonging to one of the popes, sank at the entrance to the then flourishing port of Sandwich. The sand silted round it, forming a great bank, and blocking up the entrance to the haven, and it is recorded that from this date the prosperity of Sandwich as a seaport greatly declined. It is believed, with some show of reason, that the ancient wreck now discovered is identical with the papal Caryke, or Carrick, which sank at this spot in the reign of Henry VIII." introduction of the chrysanthemum into England, a word on the subject from its native place, Pekin, may not be out of place. It is not generally known that the Chinese grow the chrysanthemum as a standard tree, espe cially for selling. They graft them on to a stalk of artemisia. There is a species of artemisia that grows wild and covers the waste ground round Pekin; it springs from seed every year, and by the autumn attains to a tree eight or ten feet high with a stem one and one-half inch thick. The Chinese cut it down, and, after drying it, use it as fuel; the small twigs and seeds are twisted into a rope, which is lighted and hung up in a room to smoulder for hours; the pungent smell of the smoke drives out the mosquitoes. This plant, after being potted, is cut down to about three feet and used as the stock, the twigs of chrysanthemum are grafted round the top, and it quickly makes a fine tree, the flowers grow and open, and as the stock soon withers the whole tree dies, and folks say, "another ingenious fraud of the Chinaman." A favorite style of growing chrysanthemums is in the shape of a fan, with eight or ten flowers in different parts of it. If the flowers are not grown on the plant they are tied on, which also does for selling. The winters in Pekin are very cold, and last about four months, and having no glass houses the Chinese gar deners do not have the chance of producing such a variety of such fine flowers as their European brethren, but in the case of chrysanthemums they have many curious and beautiful varieties. Theo. Child, in Nature. |