such associations as those of the Baron d'Holbach, or the royal infidel of Potsdam, are transmitted to us; but he unscrupulously indulged in those which sought amusement in the real exaggerated, or invented grounds of scandal or ridicule of their neighbours. His credulity extended, with little discrimination, to all, as the ready adoption of an infamous calumny against Madame de Lamballe, (page 42, of volume ii.) shows, and, as his editor should have perceived and corrected; but most inadequately, indeed, has this conscientious duty been performed by the gentleman who undertook it. Numerous as are the misrepresentations of facts, persons and dates, exposed by the Quarterly Reviewer, they constitute not one half, in truth, of those that disfigure the publication, and of which I shall submit some few examples. Yet, something better might surely have been expected from the author of a popular work, "The Belgic Revolution in 1830," which appeared in 1833; though there, likewise, he betrays an unacquaintance with literary history, when he numbers Scaliger among the natives of Holland. (See Gent. Mag. vol. IV. N. S. p. 70.) That great scholar was, indeed, for many years, a professor in the University of Leyden, but France gave him birth.*

* In 1793, I had some difficulty in discovering the old house at Agen, where Julius Cæsar Scaliger lived, and Joseph Justus was born, but I succeeded; and the habitation must, even then (1540), have denoted little wealth in the possessor, far more accordant with the depreciatory statement of the bitter Scioppius, than with the family's princely pretensions. My first inquiry in his native place was directed to a venerable looking ecclesiastic, whom I met in the public walks, and whose most unexpected answer was "that he had never heard of such a person." Similarly, in my early residence here, (Cork,) I was curious to ascertain whether, among the numerous bearers of the name of Spenser, there still existed any of kindred blood to the enchanting bard who has immortalised the neighbouring localities; when the reply of an old and comfortable proprietor, an Edmond Spenser, too, was precisely the same as the Gascon Abbé's-" he had never heard of the great poet." Dr.

Without stopping to notice the errors which we may benignantly attribute to the press, I have to remark, that the last mistress of Louis XV. Marie Vaubernier, more generally known as Mademoiselle L'Ange, before her exaltation! born in 1744 (not 1746, as Mr. White asserts), and executed the 31st December 1793, is uniformly named Du Barré, instead of Dubarry. I was personally acquainted with her nominal husband, for they never saw each other after quitting the church, where the sacrament was profaned, but, except as a married woman, she could not appear independently at court. It was in Toulouse I knew him, where he resided very unostentatiously, as was meet, with a family of children by another woman. And it was by my father's nephew, Count Rice, that her brotherin-law, the Vicomte Dubarry, fell Nov. 17, 1778, at Bath, in a duel, of which the ostensible cause was a dispute at play, but it really originated in the Vicomte's jealousy of his beautiful wife,

a

source of personal quarrel which the dread of ridicule for exposing his own shame would suffer no Frenchmen to avow, how sensible soever he may be to the injury; and a colourable pretext for his vengeance was

Todd was not able to pursue Spenser's descendants beyond the third generation; nor have I been more successful in tracing them further, through his son's connexions, and equally my own allies, the family of Nagle, in this county: they possess no documents in aid of the research. Bayle, under the article of his Dictionary, Verone, gives a transcript of the patent of naturalization granted to Julius Cæsar Scaliger, in 1528, by Francis the First, in which no claim of sovereign descent is put forward. It was procured for Bayle by Colbert's learned librarian, Baluze. (See Gent. Mag. for July 1840, p. 23.) The writing of Julius Scaliger was peculiarly distinct, uniform and regular, much to the gratification of his printers, who, at first view of his manuscript sheets, could determine their capacity in print. I have heard the same of Porson, and, indeed, could name several more, though unluckily this is not the general merit of the learned, as, much to their blame, must be acknowledged. The statue of La Cepede, the continuator of Buffon, is to be erected at Agen, but not that of Scaliger.

sought in a forced altercation at cards. Rice defended his own cause, as he could do in all confidence; for he was assured, he told me, before-hand of the royal pardon; but the jury at once acquitted him. (See Annual Register for 1779, page 204 of the Chronicle portion.) He was a Count of the Roman Empire, and then, chief of the house which now owns Lord Monteagle for its head, in Kerry, originally from Wales.

The Earl of Barrymore (Richard, the sixth with that title) disgraced himself by acknowledging the consanguinity of the Dubarry's, for which the sole existing foundation was the resemblance of name. The price of this debasement was a most gracious reception at court, with the more substantial gratification of some costly Venetian mirrors, and various specimens of the choicest Sevre porcelaine.

At Madame Dubarry's death she betrayed more than feminine weakness; for, as a frequent witness of the fact, I can assert that scarcely another instance can be cited among the numerous female victims, during that disastrous æra, of less energy or resignation than what was displayed by the male portion of the sufferers. As part of a single day's ensanguined execution, I beheld the sacrifice of eleven nuns to the revolutionary Moloch, martyrs to their faith, surely, for their alleged crime was hearing the mass of a nonjuring priest. Mournful in the extreme, and deeply affecting, was the sight, yet sublime in the contemplation of its inspiring cause, which lent to humble beings, essentially weak in their nature, an elevation of spirit and fortitude of endurance, unsurpassed, I may truly affirm, by what philosophy could inculcate, or pride assume. "" Prodigæ vitæ, cruore Purpuratæ Martyres ; Auspicatæ morte vitam, Pace guadent perpeti." The number of the victims may remind us of St. Ursula, and her companions, whose martyrdom Usher, in his "Ecclesiarum Britannicarum Primordia," Lond. 1687, page 108, places about the year 450. The addition of M, probably distinctive of their fate, as martyrs, (XI. M.) deluded some credulous writers into the extravagant assertion, that they numbered eleven

thousand!

The event is celebrated in the Catholic Church on the 21st October.

The customary and familiar address of the royal favourite to her voluptuous paramour, was by the name of La France. He was doubtless abundantly licentious in his conduct; but, as fairly observed in the Gentleman's Magazine, page 202, the story of the Parc aux Cerfs was grossly magnified, like the prisoners of the Bastile, where, on its capture, that memorable revolutionary initiative, there were no more than seven, and not one by order of Louis XVI. instead of the reported scores. Louis XV. in fact, was naturally timid with the sex, of which Marmontel (Mémoires, livre viii.) gives a striking proof, in relation to the beautiful Madame de Séran; but with such a woman as Madame Dubarry, he felt quite at ease, as our Charles did with his humble Nelly, the only one of his mistresses, who appears to have occupied his dying thoughts, much more so than with the stately high-born dames, who, like our Castlemains and Portsmouths, had enjoyed, or were candidates for, her place.*

* One of the most celebrated, and certainly the most beautiful, tragic actress of that day, was Mademoiselle Raucourt, who then excited quite as much popular enthusiasm as Mademoiselle Rachel does at present. She was very young when presented to the royal favourite, in solicitation of her all-powerful protection, which was not only most graciously promised, but accompanied with the maternal and impres

sive recommendation of virtuous conduct! (d'être sage.) The example, however, was more potent than the advice coming from such a quarter! for her life was a continuous series of profligacy.

Why, grandmama," sharply recriminated a young married lady, more than suspected of being faithless to her vow, when reproved for her behaviour, "why, grandmama! your own example should shield me from your rebuke." "Quite the reverse," answered the grand-parent, "it is that which authorises my censure, and enforces my warning of the consequences that await you." The denunciation was unheeded, and equally unrealized; for the lady was soon elevated to a coronet, at the price of comparatively insignificant damages. Thus crime triumphs; and its penalty resolves itself into a mere pecuniary consideration, wholly, however, beyond the reach of a poor sufferer, in a land where,

The repartee attributed to the Duc d'Ayen, on the fatal malady of Louis, is not correctly rendered. When informed that it was "la petite vérole,"

under a misrepresentation of its purpose, such an outcry has been raised against the "Taxa Cancellaria Apostolicæ;" first published, I believe, by Leo X. in 1514.

Religion admits, and the well-being of society demands, that the adulteress should be put away; (St. Matthew, v. 32.) but the purchase, by a stranger, of a wife, from a husband, with a halter round her neck, however barbarous in practice, is far less immoral than making her the prize of her accomplice in guilt. Yet, the law, which sanctions this compromise of vice, forbids the redemption, by marriage, of a rape, on the assumption that it would be a compromise of felony. Is law, we may ask, never to discard its antiphrases and fictions, as when female seduction is only amenable to its vindication, under the guise of loss of services to the parents? Money is thus constantly made the measure and reparation of manifold delinquencies. In its mandates even honour, that artificial sensitiveness, which has its real source, to use the words of Lord Brougham, (Speech on Parliamentary Reform, p. 624.) in that most despicable of fears, the fear of being thought afraid, bows in humble submission, whenever a magistrate is opportunely found to bind the combatants, in any penalty, to the maintenance of peace. And the voice, which loudly cried with the father of the Cid, in the original Spanish drama of Guilhen de Castro," Las Mocedades del Cid," Act 1, (Comedias, Valencia, 1621,)

"Lava, lava con sangre,

Porque el honor que se lava, Con sangre se ha de lavar"becomes quiescent, if not satisfied. Here, at least, the effect is salutary, and has long indeed suggested to me, as a consequence, that the surest counteraction of duels would be the imposition of a corresponding fine for the benefit of the informer. We may now, it is true, felicitate ourselves on the declining influence of this most irrational of social anomalies, which challenges the satisfaction of a gentleman from the ruffian, the swindler, or the genuine blackguard, as circumstances may exhibit the offender. But its occasionally excrescent magnitude, like a periodical epidemic, may be estimated by the historical fact, that in the short space of sixteen years, from 1590 to 1606, under the good Henry IV. ¡no less than four thousand lives were sacrificed to the murderous prejudice. Such is the testi

"Pas si petite," was his prompt distinction, which is far more pointed and epigrammatic than the sententious and dilated, "Je n'y crois pas, car il n'y a rien de petit chez les grands." This nobleman, who, on the death of his father, succeeded to the peerage of Noailles, (See Gent. Mag. Sept. 1840, p. 252, and Nov. p. 469,) was more notorious as a wit than as a warrior, a title to which he had little claim, though invested with the Marshal's staff; and the answer to Louis XV. on the numerous predecessors of his Majesty, equal to those who filled his throne since Pharamond," in Madame Dubarry's favours, was this Duke's, not Richelieu's, as maintained by Mr. White. On another occasion, when the high nobility urged some complaint against that great financial corporation-" the Farmers General of the Revenue," the King, in defence of this body, contended that they supported the State. "Yes, Sire," responded D'Ayen, "as the rope sustains the hanged criminal." He died in August 1793, and before twelve months had revolved, in the ensuing July, just

mony of contemporaneous magistrates and writers, among others, of Sully (Mémoires, tome vii. p. 62.) The poet's view of an insult is that of reason

"A moral, sensible, and well-bred man Will not offend me; and no other can." (See Gent. Mag. for January 1841, p. 32.)

At the decease of Madlle. Raucourt in 1815, a furious popular commotion, it will be recollected, was excited at Paris, on the refusal of the clergy to perform the funeral rites of this abandoned woman. During the Reign of Terror she was imprisoned, together with most of the theatrical artists, accused of corrupting the public morals! and favouring the old order of things; but the national taste, or passion, soon revived; for, under the Directorial Government, (1795-9,) not less, I remember, than sixty-three Salles de Spectacle, or playhouses, were nightly opened. These were subsequently reduced to thirteen by Bonaparte, much to the public advantage; nor do the authorised theatres now, I believe, exceed twenty, or rather eighteen. The attempt at an unlimited licence, both in number and exhibitions, immediately consequent on the Revolution of 1830, was quickly and necessarily repressed; for every feeling of decency was outraged in the abominations then presented on the stage.

five days previous to Robespierre's downfall, his widow, daughter-in-law, and grand-daughter, a cumulative and holocaust immolation, were sacrificed to the tyrant's insatiate passion for human slaughter. "Trois générations s'éteignirent comme une ombre,"

in the language of the poet, as in the similar collective execution of the family of the virtuous Malesherbes. (Gent. Mag. for Nov. 1839, p. 480.)*,

*It was on this solemn and awful occasion, that the President of the fell tri. bunal, Fouquier Tinville, attempted to display his wit in an atrocious pun. One of this doomed triple-generation, the daughter-in-law, laboured under extreme deafness, and pleaded the fact in disproof of her participation in the imputed conspiracy, which was the pretext of their arraignment: "Je n'ai pu conspirer, asserted the lady, "car je suis sourde." "Tu as donc conspiré sourdement," retorted this infernal judge. The French expression, it is known, conveys the double meaning of deafly, and clandestinely. She was the grand-daughter of that ornament of French magistracy, the Chancellor D'Aguesseau, whose statue, in fit adjunction to that of his great predecessor, Michel de l'Hospital, is conspicuous in front of the Chamber of Deputies. Madame de la Fayette was another of this lady's children, but happened then to be in a different prison, whence she was not released till February 1795, when she hastened to share her husband's captivity at Olmutz, where he experienced such harsh treatment, except from an Irish officer, Mac Elligot, whom La Fayette uniformly mentioned with deep gratitude. And here, I may take the opportunity of stating, that Rear-Admiral (Contre-Amirel) Casy, as he is called, but it should be Casey, a distinguished seaman, now second in command, under Admiral Hugon, of the French Mediterranean fleet, is of direct Irish descent, the grandson of an old friend, indeed a relation of mine, who resided at Bordeaux, but was a native of Limerick. The present governor of Algeria, General Bugeaud's Irish alliance may be seen in the Gent. Mag. for August 1837, page 153. "Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ?" we are well warranted to ask; for easy, in truth, and abundant are the proofs of Irish achievement over the globe's surface. And looking at home, if military renown of the highest order, pre-eminent alike in its source and fruits-if," that spell upon the mind of man," the sway of a master spirit over countless myriads of his coun

Young Hall, of Jamaica, whose extravagance is alluded to in the letter of 11th June, 1774, was the hero of the Chevalier Rutledge's satirical Quinzaine Anglaise, relative to which the Gentleman's Magazine for April 1837, (p. 360,) and for August of same year, (p. 152,) may be consulted. Rutledge's father is also mentioned by Lord Mahon, in his History, (vol. iii. p. 339,) in conjunction with Walsh, the ancestor of Count Walsh de Sérant. His comedy, "Le Bureau d' Esprit," in derision of Madame Geoffrin's literary dinners, possesses considerable merit; and abundant, truly, were the materials of ridicule presented to comic talent in these ostentatious entertainments, notwithstanding Marmontel's laudatory report of them.

On the 1st June 1776, Mr. Swinburne writes-"that there was much talk at Madrid of the amours of the Count Mora with the Duchess of Heusca, who had married his father, and broke his son's heart." If so, the young man only experienced the infliction that Mademoiselle L'Espinasse had suffered from her disappointed

trymen,-if the ascendancy of virtue in rescuing a nation from the habits of rooted vice, if these faculties, distinctive of the great and good, are tests of genuine glory, what people can present them to our admiration in more undisputed possession, or transcendant lustre, than Ireland may now exultingly do, in her three illustrions sons,-WELLINGTON, O'CONNELL,-and FATHER (I love the venerable prefix !) MATHEW? Where, in the community of existing men, shall we find their compeers? And, discordant as should seem the elements of their respective merits, or anomalous the association, posterity, I hesitate not to anticipate, will place them on an equal pedestal of fame, and, not less, ascribe to each a parallel and commensurate solicitude for the welfare of their common country, how variant soever their schemes of policy and modes of action, in the pursuit, may appear. How many eminent characters of former days, seemingly repugnant in opinion, and antipathic in feeling, has the impartial judgment of history assimilated and viewed in juxta-position, granting, in full confidence, to each an identity of patriotic object, with a diversity of sentiments as to the means of attainment, or principle of rule? I need only recall the bitter contentions of Pitt and Fox, of Canning and Brougham, &c.

man.

love of him, which, as we learn from Grimm, Morellet and Marmontel, caused the death of this celebrated woOf their correspondence, as I lately had occasion to observe, the philosopher D'Alembert, himself an aspirant for her affections, became the complaisant medium.

Among the various candidates for the identity of the Masque de Fer, adverted to at page 173, vol. i. and again, in vol. ii. p. 63, as well as in the Gentleman's Magazine, I do not find the supposed son of Anne of Austria by the Duke of Buckingham. (See Gent. Mag. for October 1840, p. 375). This version of the historical problem first appeared, I think, in a publication under the title of "Le Masque de Fer," by M. Regnault de Warin, in 1804, 4 vols. 12mo., of which a fourth edition bears, I see, the date of 1818. The author, though he has given it the form of a romance, still maintains the truth of its groundwork, which, however, is little sustained by a deduction of dates, for this mysterious personage, who died in 1703, had he been the fruit of the alleged intercourse, must have passed his seventyeighth year, (1625-1703,) while the registry of his death, under the name of Mathioli, defines his age at fortyfive, though the effects of confinement naturally gave him the appearance of ten years more. No conjecture seems less founded than Mr. White's, who assumes him to be the disgraced finan. cial superintendent, Fouquet; but this minister, born in 1615, would, in 1703, have been eighty-eight, an age utterly irreconcileable, not only with the registry, but with every visible bodily symptom of the individual. Lord Dover, in his ingenious Essay, exerts himself, and with some plausibility, on the other hand, to prove, that Mathioli (Ercule) was the real name and genuine personage-a minister, we are informed, of Charles III. Duke of Mantua, who had practised a humiliating deception on Louis XIV. and his Secretary of State, Pompone. But, is the "dignus vindice nodus" here? Was this the fit object of the Grand Monarque's veiled revenge? Others, again, have represented the unknown being as the son of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin; still more unlikely; for though there occasionally existed a

community of interest, there never appeared any the slighest personal love between them. The supposition that he was twin brother of Louis XIV. by no means rests on satisfactory proof; and yet seems to me the best supported, pretty much as the ascription of the Letters of Junius to Sir Philip Francis. See Voltaire, (Siècle de Louis XIV. chap. 25.); Soulavie, (Mémoires de Richelieu, tome iii. p. 350, &c.)

The noble devotedness of the Hungarian Magnates, or Palatines, (Swinburne, i. 350,) was not, as expressed there, and as repeated in the Gentleman's Magazine, "Moriemur pro Regina Maria Teresa," but the far more striking and energetic exclamation, "Moriamur pro Rege nostro Maria Teresia," which the national annals also assure us is more regular in application to a female sovereign of Hungary. There, as if in some degree dissatisfied with, if not ashamed of, "the monstrous regiment of woman," as characterised by the ungallant John Knox, a sort of compromise was struck between the proscription of the Salic Law,* (" nulla pars hæreditatis. ad sexum femineum perveniat,") and the more liberal monarchical principle of other countries. The throne was assured to the sovereign lady, though still presumed to be filled by a King. In 1386, when Margaret, who afterwards espoused Sigismond of Brandenberg, reigned alone; and again, when Elizabeth of Luxembourg wore the crown, they were uniformly addressed by the masculine title. So, likewise, we find in Livy, (lib. i. cap. 9,) Tarquinius Priscus, and Tanaquil his wife denominated Reges; as are Ptolemy, with his sister and consort Cleopatra, (lib. xxxvii. cap. 3,) "quod consortes regni fuissent," say the commentators. The Spaniards, in like manner, entitle Ferdinand and Isabella Los Reyes, as, in domestic life, the father and mother conjointly are called mis padres. The Austrian Governor and Governess of