The Catholic World Volume I Part 119

Never did any lady occupy a more remarkable and in some respects a more enviable position than herself. "There never was a case like it,"

says Madame de Sevigne, "and there never will be such a one again."

She united the most opposite conditions. By her union with Louis she was all but queen, and by her admirable tact exerted over state affairs a far greater influence than belongs in general to a sovereign's consort. She had been the servant of that very king of whom she was now the helpmate; a wise instructress to his children, and a mother in her affection and care. At one moment she was acting abbess, controlling the complicated irregularities which had crept into the religious and secular economy of Saint-Cyr, and at another she was mediating as peace-maker in the family quarrels and petty jealousies of pampered courtiers, or by her sage counsels arresting the ravages of war, and rescuing harmless populations from the scourge of fire and sword. Children loved to hear her voice, and hung upon her smiles; the poor and afflicted were fain to touch the hem of her garment, for they felt that virtue went forth from her; none were so great as to look down upon her; none so lowly as to think that she despised them. Her sovereignty over others was that to which men render the most willing obedience--the sovereignty, not merely of station or {818} intellect, but of character of sterling worth, of wisdom learned in the school of suffering, of virtue tried like gold in the fire.

As Madame de Maintenon's talents and merits prevented her being lost in a crowd of courtiers, or in any way identified with them, so, on the other hand, her affectionate disposition kept her from being isolated and closing herself round against any intrusion of private friends.h.i.+p. So far from it, she had with her a select group of ladies who were called her familiars, who shared with her, in a measure, the king's intimacy, accompanied her in her walks and drives at Marly, and were her guests at the dinners and suppers she gave at Versailles and Trianon. They were in some sort her ladies of honor, though, like herself, without any visible distinction. Of these the princ.i.p.al were Madame de Montchevreuil and Madame d'Heudicourt, both old friends, and with them nine others, among whom were her two nieces, Mesdames de Mailly and de Caylus. To each of these a history attaches; for the constant companions of so extraordinary a woman could not but have special attractions and remarkable qualities. There were in this number those who had drunk deeply of the intoxicating cup of worldly pleasure, and having drained its poisonous dregs, thirsted for the fountain of living waters. It was Madame de Maintenon's especial care to encourage such friends in their heavenly aspirations, and lead them, in the midst of the court, to enter the devotional life. Often she called the fervent Fenelon to her a.s.sistance, and his letters addressed to Madame de Grammont are a lasting proof of the readiness with which he answered to the call. If, as all her contemporaries a.s.sure us, it was impossible to combine more that was pleasing and solid in conversation than did Madame de Maintenon--if, in her case, reason, as Fenelon expressed it, spoke by the lips of the Graces--how admirable must she have appeared when she directed her powers of persuasion to the highest and most blessed of all ends! Neither pen nor pencil can adequately recall the charms which surrounded her; but the captive heart of Louis and the unanimous voice of the richest and most lettered court in Europe attest their reality and power. In her ceaseless efforts to amuse the king, his immortal interests were never lost sight of; and if she spoke to him comparatively seldom on the subject, it was because it occupied all her thoughts. Out of the abundance of the heart the lips are often mute.

In 1686 Louis suffered extreme pain and incurred great danger from a tumor, which at last required an operation. This circ.u.mstance brought Madame de Maintenon's capacity for nursing into full play. It was she who watched by his bedside, and alleviated the sufferings of the nation's idol. The surgery of that day was wretched, and the operation for fistula which had to be performed was attended with great danger.

Intense solicitude prevailed through the country; for, in spite of all efforts to prevent anxiety, the report spread rapidly that the king's life was in peril. The churches were thronged, and the people's attachment found vent in prayer. The royal patient alone was unmoved.

The _grande operation_, as it was called, had been decided on six weeks previously, and the evening before it was to take place he walked in his gardens as usual, and then slept soundly through the night, as if nothing were to happen. On waking he commended himself to G.o.d, and submitted to the painful operation with the utmost coolness.

Louvois held his hand, and Madame de Maintenon was in the room. In the afternoon he sent for his ministers, and continued to hold councils daily, though the surgeon's knife cruelly renewed the incisions several times. "It is in G.o.d," wrote Madame de Maintenon, "that we must place our trust; for men know not what they say, nor what they do." The fourteen physicians of {819} Charles II. were still more unskilful in his last illness, [Footnote 189] and justify equally the opinion of the Northern Farmer:

"Doctors, they knaws nowt, for a says what's nawways true: Naw soort a' koind o' use to saay the things that a do."

[Footnote 189: "The king was in a chair--they had placed a hot iron on his head, and they held his teeth open by force." Agnes Strickland's "Lives of the Queens of England;" vol. viii., p. 447.

"A loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced into his mouth." Macaulay's "History of England," chap. iv.. 1685.]

In the case of Louis, however, the operator Felix answered to his name. A cure was effected, and the kingdom was filled with demonstrations of joy. "Every one," as Madame de Maintenon wrote, "was in raptures. Father Bourdaloue preached a most beautiful sermon.

Toward the close he addressed the king. He spoke to him of his health, his love for his people, and the fears of his court. He caused many tears to be shed; he shed them himself. It was his heart that spoke, and he touched all hearts. You know well what I mean." After dining with the citizens of Paris at the Hotel de Ville, Louis drove through every quarter amid the loudest acclamations. "The king," wrote his wife again, "has never been in such a good humor as since he has witnessed the enthusiastic love the capital bears toward him. I very much like his sentiments: perhaps they will inspire him with the design of relieving his people." Absolute as the sovereignty of Louis was, his subjects delighted in his rule. He was the last of a long line who, century after century, had formed the nation out of the confusion of feudal times, and had, of all kings, the best right to say, if indeed he ever did say, [Footnote 190] _"L'etat, c'est moi!"_

[Footnote 190: See _"Duc de Noailles," tome_ iii., p. 668.]

In him the state was summed up, and the kingdom was impersonated in him. The soldier expiring on the battlefield cried _"Vive le roi!"_ and vessels have gone down at sea with the entire crew shouting the same words; for _"Vive le roi!"_ was, in their minds, equivalent to _"Vive la France!"_ The government of Louis XIV., though despotic, was, on the whole, marked by moderation, particularly after the death of Louvois; and if sometimes, seduced by the glory of foreign conquests and the love of regal display he forgot the interests of his people and the misery his magnificence entailed on them, Madame de Maintenon was always near to counteract the arrogant minister, urge counsels of peace, and heal the bleeding wounds of a loyal population.

Yet she was far from being a meddling politician, Her advice was not offered, but asked. She abstained from entering into details, and confined herself to general suggestions of a moral character, dictated by conscience, not ambition. If she guided, or, rather, gently disposed, the king to this or that measure, she was in turn guided herself. Her correspondence with the Abbe Gobelin, Fenelon, and the Bishop of Chartres sufficiently proves that her highest ambition was to be a servant of G.o.d. That Racine, of whom she was the friend and patroness, should extol her in his verse [Footnote 191] is not surprising; but the satirist Boileau, be it remembered, was no less her eulogist. If Byron's beautiful lines on Kirke White had the more weight because they occurred in his most biting satire, something of the same kind may be said of Boileau's testimony to Madame de Maintenon:

[Footnote 191: "Esther," act ii., scene vii.]

"J'en sais une, cherie et du monde et de Dieu; Humble dans les grandeurs, sage dana la fortune: Qui gemit comme Esther de sa gloire importune; Que le vice lui-meme est contraint d'estimer, Et que, sur ce tableau, d'abord tu sais nonmer."

[Footnote 192]

[Footnote 192: "I know one beloved of G.o.d and man, who is humble in her grandeur and wise in her good fortune; who groans like Esther over her trying glory; whom vice itself is compelled to respect; and whom, on seeing this picture, you will name in an instant." Satire X.]

The Duc de Noailles is not the only member of the French Academy who has arisen of late years to refute the calumnies of Saint-Simon. M.

Saint-Marc Girardin has ably defended the {820} victim of his malignity in the _Journal des Debats_, [Footnote 193] and Messieurs Rigault, de Pontmartin, Monty, Chasles, and Hocquet, have pursued successfully the same generous and equitable course.

[Footnote 193: 4th and 16th October, 1856.]

When James II., in December, 1688, fled from his kingdom, the sympathies of more than half the French people were enlisted on his side. Ignorant of the British const.i.tution, they knew little of the peril it had incurred through the king's extraordinary extension of the dispensing power, and they saw in the landing and success of the Prince of Orange nothing but a horrible domestic tragedy, in which, through personal ambition and hatred of the true religion, a Catholic sovereign was hurled from his throne by an unnatural daughter and son-in-law. They joined, therefore, without any misgiving, in the cordial reception given to the royal fugitives by Louis, and desired nothing so much as to make common cause with them, and take vengeance on their foes. Madame de Maintenon was not among those who pressed with all ceremony into the presence of the exiled king and queen; but she visited them in private, and was received as became her station.

The compa.s.sion she felt for their fate, her respectful address and Christian consolations, so won upon Mary Beatrice, that a lasting friends.h.i.+p was formed between the queen in name, not in reality, and the queen in reality, not in name. It continued without interruption during five-and-twenty years, and was cemented by unity of sentiments and mutual services. The ex-queen had married in her fifteenth year, and had overcome, by the advice of her mother and the Pope, her desire to devote herself to a religious life. [Footnote 194] Whatever may have been her trials in a convent, they could hardly have equalled those which befel her as queen. A hundred and forty-five of her letters to Madame de Maintenon are extant, and the readers of Miss Strickland's "Lives" are familiar with the Chaillot correspondence, in which the desolate and sorrowful queen pours forth the fulness of her sensitive heart, and never tires of expressing her love and esteem for that remarkable friend whom Providence has led across her th.o.r.n.y path.

Often Madame de Maintenon repaired to Saint-Germain to visit her, and still more frequently the latter came to Versailles to see Madame de Maintenon. It was some relief to escape for a time from that downcast, dreary court in exile, where a crowd of poor but faithful followers gathered around a master equally wrong-headed and unfortunate. The semblance of royalty which was there kept up only increased the sadness of the place, and fostered those jealousies, intrigues, and cabals of which a banished court is so often the parent and victim.

[Footnote 194: _"Duc de Noailles," tome_ iv., p. 231.]

A powerful coalition, in the creation of which the Prince of Orange was the chief agent, had long been menacing France, and was now actually formed. Louis found himself opposed to the greater part of Europe, for the Emperor Leopold, the Germanic and Batavian federations, the kings of Spain and Sweden, and the Pope himself, obliged to act on the defensive, adhered to the league of Augsburg.

[Footnote 195]

[Footnote 195: _"Duc de Noailles,"_ p. 253. ]

Three powerful armies were sent by the king of France to the seat of war. The mission of one of them was to capture Philipsburg; and from the camp before that stronghold the king's brother wrote many letters to Madame de Maintenon, describing the operations in progress. The Duc du Maine also, once her pupil, and now in his eighteenth year, wrote to her from time to time, and received thankfully the advice she offered him with all a mother's solicitude. The second of the three armies was charged with the devastation of the Palatinate, and fulfilled the part a.s.signed it with distressing precision. If its soil was not to supply the French, it must {821} furnish nought to the Germans. It was a perfect garden, and Duras received orders to reduce it to a wilderness. Half a million of human beings were warned that in three days their houses would be burned and their fields laid waste.

Fiercely the flames went up from city and hamlet, and the fugitives sank with fatigue and hunger in the snow, or, escaping beyond the borders, filled the towns of Europe with squalid beggary. Every orchard was hewn down, every vine and almond tree was destroyed. The castle of the Elector Palatine was a heap of ruins; the stones of Manheim were hurled into the Rhine. The cathedral of Spires and the marble sepulchres of eight Caesars were no more; and the fair city of Treves was doomed to the same cruel fate. It was time for the voice of mercy to speak. Marshal Duras had already written to Louvois, [Footnote 196] to remonstrate against the barbarous orders he was compelled to execute, and Madame de Maintenon herself is said to have interceded with Louis for the suffering people of the Rhine. The Duc de Noailles, indeed, does not state this, like Macaulay, [Footnote 197] as matter of history, though he allows that it is probably true; and this variety in the views of the two historians, each anxious to do justice in this particular to the king's wife, proves how difficult it is for even the most sagacious and unprejudiced writers to arrive at the exact truth in reference to bygone days. Macaulay is certainly inclined to attribute to Madame de Maintenon a much larger measure of political power than she really exercised; and it is curious to observe the chain of pure a.s.sumptions by which, having taken it for granted that she "governed" Louis, he arrives at the conclusion that she induced him to recognize the Pretender as James III. [Footnote 198] In a letter written [Footnote 199] soon after the taking of Philipsburg, she seems to disclaim all active interference in state affairs. In speaking of Louvois, she says that she never contradicted him, and adds, "People think that I govern the kingdom, and they do not know that I am convinced G.o.d has bestowed on me so many favors only that I may seek more earnestly the king's salvation. I pray G.o.d daily to enlighten and sanctify, him." But it is evident how completely an earnest recommendation to Louis to spare Treves, and stay the ravages in the Palatinate, may have tallied with that unique and hallowed purpose. Have not those from whom such truculent orders emanate a terrible account to render? Has not she who dissuades a ruler from an iniquitous measure done something toward saving his soul?

[Footnote 196: 21st May, 1689.]

[Footnote 197: Hist., chap, xi., 1689.]

[Footnote 198: Hist, chap, xxv, 1701.]

[Footnote 199: 4th October, 1688.]

There are stories afloat respecting Madame de Maintenon, and in everybody's mouth, which the Duc de Noailles scarcely condescends to notice. That she who always spoke and wrote of Louis in terms of affectionate homage should have seriously committed herself to such a.s.sertions, as that her daily task ever since her marriage was to amuse a king who could not be amused, and that he was so selfish that he never loved anything but himself, is an improbability as inconsistent with her character and policy as it is at variance with the facts of the case. That in his latter years her life was embittered by his fretful and querulous temper, and by the fits of pa.s.sion into which he often fell, and that in one of her letters written at that period she complains of the difficulty of amusing him, is undoubtedly true; but this and similar complaints ought not to be stretched beyond their natural meaning, and made to tell too severely against the king. When, in the early part of 1691, Louis appeared in the camp before Mons, his wife, separated from him for the first time since their marriage, retired to Saint-Cyr, alarmed at the dangers he was about to incur, and unable to conceal her sadness. Consolatory letters poured in upon her from all quarters, especially {822} from her spiritual friends and advisers--the Abbe Gobelin, the Bishop of Chartres, and Fenelon. But, "the selfish monarch who could not be amused," did he, amid the bustle of a siege, find time to write to a lady fifty-five years old, whose only business had been to amuse him or fail in the attempt? He did; and that not once now and then; not briefly and drily, as a matter of form; not like a man who had little to say, and still less attachment, to the person to whom he said it.

No; every day in her solitude Madame de Maintenon was consoled by seeing a royal dragoon ride into the court-yard with a letter for her from his majesty, and almost every day with one from the king's brother also. Nor was this all; the king, "who had never loved any one but himself," proved that there was at least one exception to this rule, and that he loved his wife. In 1692 she joined him at Mons, by his command, in company with other ladies of the court, and followed him to the siege of Namur. Amus.e.m.e.nts were not wanting in the royal camp. The king and his courtiers dined to the music of timbrels, trumpets, and hautboys, and he reviewed his troops in the presence of carriages full of fair faces. But, with all this, he visited the different quarters so diligently, and inspected so closely the works and trenches, riding continually within range of the enemy's guns, that his wife had almost as much anxiety for his safety as when she pondered at a distance the cruel chances of war.

In spite of his many faults, there was much in Louis XIV. to captivate the imagination of one like Madame de Maintenon. "No prince," says the Duke of Berwick, [Footnote 200] "was ever so little known as this monarch. He has been represented as a man not only cruel and false, but difficult of access. I have frequently had the honor of audiences from him, and have been very familiarly admitted to his presence; and I can affirm that his pride is only in appearance. He was born with an air of majesty, which struck every one so much, that n.o.body could approach him without being seized with awe and respect; but as soon as you spoke to him, he softened his countenance, and put you quite at ease. He was the most polite man in his kingdom; and his answers were accompanied by so many obliging expressions, that, if he granted your request, the obligation was doubled by the manner of conferring it; and if he refused, you could not complain."

[Footnote 200: Memoirs, vol. ii.]

Madame de Maintenon's campaigning life was not altogether free from disagreeables. On one occasion, writing from Dinant, [Footnote 201]

she relates how they encountered more difficulty in retiring from Namur than in approaching it. They were eleven hours and a half on the road, and wholly unprovided with food. She arrived at her journey's end exhausted with hunger and suffering also from rheumatism and headache; but, it being an abstinence day, the only repast that awaited her was oil-soup. The king likewise, though throughout the campaign he dined ordinarily with all the sumptuousness of Versailles, found himself obliged sometimes to partake of a cold collation under a hedge, without quitting his travelling carriage. Warfare would be an easy calling if such were its worst hards.h.i.+ps.

[Footnote 201: 12th June, 1693.]

In Flanders, as in France, Madame de Maintenon continued to take the most lively interest in the course of events, martial, political, and social. Proximity to the scene of action did not induce her to exceed those limits of reserve which she had long since marked out for herself. Though informed of all that happened, and forming a sound judgment on almost every occurrence, though earnestly desiring peace rather than aggrandizement, and justice rather than glory, she obtruded no views of her own in the cabinet of the king, nor even influenced the choice of generals. It was her habit of close observation, and her exact description {823} of all that pa.s.sed, which made Napoleon Bonaparte delight in reading her correspondence, and p.r.o.nounce it superior to that of Madame de Sevigne, because it had more in it. Madame de Maintenon speaks in one place of her own style as "dry and succinct;" and, indeed, were it not for the piety which constantly breathes through them, her letters would often read like the despatches of a general. She is brief, terse, sententious; her mind being evidently bent on things rather than on words. As a letter-writer, she resembles Napoleon himself more than any other French auth.o.r.ess. Her style is free from that vacillation, that timid adoption of a definite line, which always indicates a weak thinker and a total absence of system in the mind. Had it been otherwise, she would never have stood so high in the esteem of foreign courts, nor would princes and sovereigns, such as the Elector of Cologne, the Duc de Lorraine, and his mother, Queen Eleanor, have written to ask favors at her hands.

The reign of Louis XIV. lasted so long, that neither his son nor grandson ever sat on the throne. If the latter, the Duc de Bourgogne, had not died in his thirtieth year, he might, as the once docile pupil of Fenelon and Madame de Maintenon, have fulfilled his promises of excellence, and have left to his successors a rich inheritance of wisdom. "Telemachus" was not composed expressly for him in vain. He was born in 1682, and at an early age was affianced to Marie-Adelade of Savoy. The princess was at that time only eleven years old, and was, by the marriage contract, to remove to France, and be wedded in the ensuing year. The union of the young couple was celebrated in 1697, but on account of their extreme youth they continued to live apart two years longer. During this time, Madame de Maintenon undertook to complete Marie-Adelade's education. The instructress was worthy of a princess destined, as it was believed, to govern France.

All day she sat by her when sick, and Racine read Plutarch's "Lives"

to her during the pauses of the night; Bossuet was her chaplain, and Dangeau, whose ma.n.u.script memoirs of Louis' court have proved so useful to historians, [Footnote 202] was her knight of honor. She was the delight of all around, and so charmed the king, that he was never willing to part with her. But there were no apartments Marie-Adelade so much loved to frequent as those of Madame de Maintenon. Severe as her admonitions often were, she possessed in the highest degree the art of attaching young persons to her, and inspired them insensibly with taste, wisdom, and n.o.bility of mind. She had long been convinced that the education of princes was conducted, generally, in such a way as to prepare them for habitual _ennui_. They learned and saw everything in childhood, and, when grown up, had nothing fresh to see or learn. She withdrew her, therefore, as far as possible from the court, and submitted her to the simple and wholesome routine of Saint-Cyr. The princess proved extremely docile, and her amiability was as striking as her diligence. The society of the religious in Saint-Cyr, so far from putting a constraint on her lively and winning ways, seemed only to fit her more completely to be the pet companion of Louis XIV. Her sprightly talk, her opening mind, her elegant simplicity, amused him in his walks and drives, in the gardens, the galleries, and the chase; and while he contrived daily some new diversion for the fascinating child, he could not but trace in her the happy results of Madame de Maintenon's unwearied attention. She entered into all her childish pleasures, and even played hide-and-seek with her, that she might, as she said afterward, gain her ear for serious truths, and by yielding all she could, have the better reason for withholding what would have been hurtful. At last--nor was the time long--Marie-Adelade quitted Madame de Maintenon's embrace, and with her heavenly counsels {824} graven on her memory, and given in writing into her hands, bidding farewell to the hallowed cloisters of Saint-Cyr, and to her daily gambols and prattle with the loving and indulgent king, she took her place beside her destined bridegroom, and "entered other realms of love."

[Footnote 202: They were first published entire in 1856.]

Such was the woman of whom the worldly and sceptical speak jeeringly as the proud widow of Scarron; the intriguing, austere, ambitious Marquise de Maintenon; the persecutrix of Huguenots, and the despot of her royal spouse. They know not what they speak, nor whereof they affirm; for they are incapable of estimating the character of the righteous. Outward acts are to them an enigma and a stumbling-block, because the soul and its guiding principles cannot be seen. A true Christian, such as Madame de Maintenon, is an object of faith, as is the Church, and as was the Church's Lord in the days of his humiliation. Seated, to say the least, on the footstool of the throne, and surrounded by all the pomp and circ.u.mstance of royal life, she was to jaundiced eyes but one in a crowd of princes and courtiers, and differing from them only in that she was more astute; but, seen as the prelates of Cambray and Meaux saw her--seen as her letters and conversations with the nuns of Saint-Cyr exhibit her--seen as the Duc de Noailles describes her, and "time, the beautifier of the dead," has rendered her--she was using this world and not abusing it; seeking society only to improve it, and solitude only to pray; holding all she possessed in fealty to her unseen King, and making every occupation subordinate to that of loosening her affections from earthly vanities, and fastening them wholly upon G.o.d. The Duc de Noailles' history does not end with the fourth volume. It leaves Madame de Maintenon in her sixty-second year--two-and-twenty years before her death. To trace her intercourse with Louis during the long and disastrous war with Spain, called the War of the Succession--her counsels and influence during the defeats by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and the triumphant reprisals of Vendome and Villars--her grief at the king's death in 1715, when she had reached her eightieth year--her retirement to the long-loved shades of Saint-Cyr--her devotion and zeal heightening as age advanced, and the celestial goal was neared--her conversations with the sisters, and her letters to the Princesse des Ursins--to a.n.a.lyze her correspondence, and her _vade-mec.u.m_ as published by M.

Bonhomme--to record the pillage of Saint-Cyr, and the outrage done to her venerable remains, as to those of the royal dead in St. Denis, by the frantic revolutionists of 1792--would supply ample materials for another article, but would only confirm the views already formed of her prevailing character and principles. Enough, perhaps, has been said to place our readers on their guard against the malice and fictions of the Duc de Saint-Simon and a host of detractors who rely too readily on his word, and to dispose them favorably toward a most judicious and remarkable history, which does honor to the French Academy and the ill.u.s.trious house of de Noailles.

{825}

From All The Year Round.

A DUBLIN MAY MORNING.

When I look down on this gay May morning from a window into Great Sackville street, where there is a huge column to Admiral Nelson, and a golden shop-front board dedicated to O'Connell, on the site for his statue, and which is by-and-by to be made into a French boulevard and planted with trees--I say, on this May morning it is easy to see that one of the many great days for Ireland has come round once more. For the crowds in the great thoroughfares, and the "boys" sitting on the bridges, and the flags and streamers, and the rolling carriages, and the general air of busy idleness, tell me that a great festival is toward; and placards in fiercely carbuncled letters proclaim in an angry fit of St. Anthony's fire that the Prince of Wales is to "OPEN"

something: which something a still greater s...o...b..tic operation of type tells us is THE DUBLIN EXHIBITION OF 1865.

Not without charms, and marked and special features of its own, is this Dublin city--to say nothing of the fresh and fair Irish faces and violet eyes which pa.s.s by in streams, or of the cheerful voices and the gay laughs heard at every turn; or of the giant policemen who wear moustaches and beards, and thus compete on more favorable terms with military rivals; or of the rollicking drivers, who stand up as they drive, very like the _cocchieri_ of Rome, and who look out for "fares"

in a debonnaire indifferent fas.h.i.+on. There is a gay, busy, foreign, particolored look about the place, which reminds one of a foreign town. The background is composed of wide s.p.a.cious streets, Grecian buildings wonderfully cla.s.sic in tone and shape, fitted into corners with porticoes that belong _to_ the street, and under which the people walk--pretty breaks where the bridges come, and the masts of s.h.i.+pping seen in the sun half way down a long, long thoroughfare. There are no warehouses or ugly business a.s.sociations; but all is shops and shopping, and color and liveliness, and carriages and walkers.

I think, as I look out on this May morning, that it is curious that a people popularly supposed to want "self-reliance" and "independence,"

and who are utterly ignorant of the "self-help" principle, should, after all, have done some few self-reliant things in this very matter of exhibitions. Some one tells me that many decades of years before gla.s.s palaces were thought of, and when the universal peace and brotherhood gla.s.s palaces were mysteriously supposed to bring with them were not quite believed in, this "un-self-reliant" people had their regular triennial exhibition of manufactures, on the French model. Further, that close on the footsteps of the Hyde Park Exhibition came the great one of Cork, and closer again on the footsteps of Cork the really great Dublin Exhibition of 1853, the building of which cost nearly eighty thousand pounds, and which was remarkable for the first international collection of pictures, and for the first performance of Handel on a colossal scale. Not content with this, I am told that this people, who were not self-reliant, went further, had two more successful exhibitions on a smaller scale, and have now finally girded themselves up for this yet more complete effort of 1865. Not so bad, this, for our poor wo-begone sister with the harp, especially when we consider that our well-to-do Scotch sister has not "fashed" herself with such follies, justly considering the margin of profit too uncertain or too slight to repay the trouble.