court phraseology, disgraced. The indignation of her biographer knows no bounds. The acute critic and impartial historian merge into the unscrupulous impetuosity of the advocate, in whose eyes there are but two colours, black and white, and whose tongue can but utter two tones. As no being is faultless, it would have not been unbecoming a mind habituated to analysis to have enquired what that little fault might have been which could have justified Anne_of Austria in her hard proceeding. Ingratitude has, indeed, too often marked the conduct of sovereigns, to allow us to take for granted that the regent was justified in what she did. Here the ingratitude did not show itself in the form of neglect, but took an active, harsh step, proving that something must have occurred, and what that something was it behoves us to enquire. M. Cousin's version is one which ought not to have been uttered except on better grounds than any he has afforded, because it serves to raise his heroine at the expense of one who is too great and grand a historical personage to be spoken of lightly.

Anne of Austria played a mighty part in the history of France. When it is considered that, in spite of the cabals of a powerful nobility, headed by her brother-in-law the Duke of Orleans; of the parliament opposed to the court; of a people ready at ail moments to throw up barricades-the same people of Paris whose temper we can truly estimate at the distance of two centuries, for they are now as they were then, and then as now; that in spite of two great wars-the one that terrible thirty years' war, which by means of her own minister was terminated by that charter of toleration the Treaty of Westphalia; and the war with Spain which ended in laying the foundation of French influence over that country; that at one time a fugitive, and auother a conqueror, rather through skilful negociation than force of arms, she yet carried her son through a minority which, the day it was ended by his becoming of age, saw the monarchy rising to its acme of splendor in the hands of Louis the Fourteenth; when we say, moreover, that no crime is laid to her charge such as stained the regencies of Catherine and Marie de Medicis; that, although not without superstition, she was truly

pious, squaring her actions by the precepts of religion-the world must acknowledge the reverence due to her memory. No doubt she found in Mazarin a skilful minister. He was to her what Richelieu had been to her husband. Hated as much by the factious nobles, Mazarin was not feared, and by his mistress he was exceedingly esteemed. By suppleness he dissolved combinations which Richelieu would have cut with the headsman's axe. Mazarin placed the source of his power and influence in the heart of his royal mistress, while Richelieu held the king in thraldom. Gross libels and spicy calumnies were, as we have seen, amongst the war weapons of the Fronde. Such calumnious pleasantries have ever marked party warfare in pleasant Paris, and the higher the aim the more did audacity and skill feel tempted to make trial. M. Cousin tells us that Madame de Hautefort resigned her place at court because she disapproved of the long secret interviews the regent afforded the cardinal minister. Happily we are not left to conjecture on this subject. Madame de Motteville has left in her memoirs an exact account of the queen's quarrel with Madame de Hautefort; and it is so simple and natural as, independently of the author's admitted truth of character, to carry with it conviction to such minds as are satisfied with adequate causes for moral phenomena.

Madame de Hautefort was not without the inevitable "one fault," and as it was a fault rather relative than specific, so might it have been the more readily considered by an admiring biographer, contented to proclaim that no worse could be alleged. It was simply a fault of manner, and for aught we can find to the contrary, a fault confined to her royal mistress, whom she continued to treat with a superiority acquired when the one was an oppressed woman of humiliated and broken spirit, and the other almost her protectress. To the immeasurable distance separating subject however eminent, from monarch, recognised, at least in principle, in the court of France, Anne brought with her the solemn and almost morose dignity of the Spaniard. Once in power, she regained at a spring her sense of dignity and right of authority. Madame de Hautefort shared

re

in full measure the antipathy with which Mazarin was regarded by the order to which the lady belonged, and which she took no pains to conceal. Her criticisms of his acts implied censures upon the regent, and as the latter had learned to place entire confidence in her minister, these repeated observations became harassing and annoying. One evening when the queen was unwell, suffering from jaundice brought on by perplexities, Madame de Hautefort took occasion to press some suit in favor of a faithful servant, and on meeting with a repulse, very freely uttered proaches of ingratitude, as she had frequently done before; on which her Majesty sharply told her that an end should be put to remarks of which she had grown weary, and bade her old friend consider her services at an end. Unprepared for such a resolution, and her eyes perhaps opened by the shock to the revelation of her forgetfulness, she threw herself on her knees, and with protestations of love and fidelity implored forgiveness. But forgiveness is not a Spanish virtue. It was no sudden resolution, although one that had been postponed and postponed, and might even have been averted by timely change of manner; but which once announced, although by an immediate cause of no great moment taken by itself, would never be recalled. So deeply affected was the poor lady by her disgrace, that fever set in, and she had to be blooded three times. The queen remained inexorable. This story, told by a truthful eye-witness, Madame de Motteville, shows that Madame de Hautefort did not resign her place because she could not approve of certain familiarities between queen and minister, such as have already been referred to; but that she was, with pain under which her habitual pride gave way and her fortitude sunk, obliged to quit the court. She afterwards married the Duke of Schomberg;

and when on one occasion availing herself of her patent, which was perpetual, to perform some office for the queen, the latter promptly set her aside before all who were present, thus setting the seal to their separation.

Who was right or who wrong in this unhappy rupture is a question which might have tempted a pen exercised at nice investigation; and the more

freely as the decision, even though adverse, would not have dimmed the strong lustre of Madame de Hautefort's character. M. Cousin cannot admit that great events from little causes spring, and so he will have it that his heroine voluntarily made sacrifice of place to wounded delicacy. The hypothesis requires the sacrifice of an illustrious woman, the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria; and she is sacrificed. It needs, moreover, that another woman, one of unquestioned truth and admirable talents, shall be turned into a damaged witness; and Madame de Motteville is sneered down into the discreet and obsequious waiting-woman. In testing the candor and impartiality of M. Cousin, the writer of personal history, we are inferentially exhibiting the qualities of the philosopher and metaphysician. He has in the one capacity betrayed, as we think, a looseness of principle which would lead us to question the firmness of his ethics; and we fear that those who see in his eclecticism a patchwork of many colors, rather than a mosaic adorning by its artistic harmoniousness a solid flooring for truth, are not altogether unjust. His own life, as we have seen, has not been that of a German psychologist, who has never set foot beyond the gateway of his university. He has gone out upon adventures and met with all its haphazards. He has chased after systems, and some have met him on the way, and each has dazzled and conquered him in turn, and he has gratefully sought to bind one to the other as so many links of a golden chain. But seeing what his impulsiveness is, we suspect his strained efforts to force union where natural fitness would not be quite obvious. The heroines whom he has selected as types of a great era did not pass their lives in the performance of simple duties; they were brilliant, and for the most part not over-scrupulous adventurers. There are others of a different class. There is Madame de Sable, the lady of intellectual society; and Jacqueline Pascal, worthy of being the sister of one of the greatest men of the time. But the length to which this article has already run forbids our entering at present upon a field which is worthy of being gone over leisurely. We reserve our views for another occasion.

Poor people, like heavy bodies, are said to move slow. The new year's season had passed away before the Reverend Eusebius Bland managed to get over to Twiller's, according to promise. Unlike as these two individuals were, in mind, pursuits, manner, and all external attributes, they had felt early in their acquaintance that there were certain fine fibres in each other's temperament which vibrated responsively, however lightly struck; and as it is round such microscopic sympathies that the strongest affections generally crystallize, it had happened that the intimacy of these two individuals had ripened rapidly, so that they had called and felt themselves old friends before they had been five years acquainted. To the great delight of Demophon and Rollo, the Vicar was as good as his word in the matter of dogs; and two handsome greyhounds were soon making slippery rushes over the rocks exposed by the ebbing tide upon the shore behind the house; while the boys cheered them on with shouts, as if there had been a SouthAfrican profusion of game under the mass of dripping seaweed that covered

them.

This gave the friends an opportunity of sitting quietly together."

Conversation requires some heating, however, before it flows into easy moulds; especially when it takes place between host and guest.

"I suppose, my dear Eusebius, you who are racy of the glebe are full of anxiety about this new church-bill which we have heard about lately."

"Of course," replied Bland, enquiringly. "You know, Twiller, one must naturally be anxious in a matter that so nearly concerns one's self."

"True. It is a very important crisis of affairs, altogether."

Now, my excellent friend," said Eland, leaning forward confidentially,

"could not you, who live so near everything, just give me the slightest sketch in the world of the aspect of

"Yes-yes-ah-is that the bill of this session ?"

Why, yes; was there one of the last session ?"

"I thought," replied Bland, reddening,-"you had implied as much. Did you not use the word 'new' ?"

"True, I did; but- -well, what effect will it have?"

Oh, as to that," replied Bland, with a sapient and slow nodding of the head;-"I fear, the less that's said the better. The Church, you know, is no longer what it was, and ministers--.)

know I live so far out of the way ;now do, pray, just give me some idea of what it is all about !"

Why, you know," said Twiller, with a violent cast of one knee over the other, "it is quite out of my line. On other subjects indeed

"But," interrupted Bland,-" since I have admitted my ignorance, tell me at least whether it is a Whig or a Tory measure; for then perhaps I could the better pronounce upon its probable tendencies."

"Oh," exclaimed Twiller, waving his hand," don't ask me about mere nominal distinctions. I only recognize two parties, the friends and the enemies of my country--and as to those who have framed this measure

"Yes," interrupted the vicar, with a look of beseeching enquiry, and sliding out his words edgeways, as if he was afraid of them :-"Are they the-tories, perhaps?"

"Oh, ah," replied Twiller, throwing himself back in his chair, and rolling his head with an important air, as he passed his hand across his forehead, where the veins were swelliug-" my excellent friend, government, you perceive, in such matters usually takes the initiative

"Therefore," rejoined Bland, though without appearing to have recovered his dread of his own words,- therefore the measure proceeds from the— a-the whigs, perhaps -?"

How much further this delicate fencing might have gone on,it is impossible to say; but something began to twinkle in Bland's little hazel eye, and to spread itself over his benevolent face, which broke Twiller down. He bent forward, with a scrutinizing glance at his friend; and then, laying his hand upon his knee, fell back in his chair in an immoderate fit of laughter, which was taken up and redoubled by the other in long and repeated explosions; nor did either desist, until they were obliged to do so; Twiller from sheer exhaustion, Bland to give vent to a fit of coughing which this sort of convulsion invariably induced in his sanguineoplethoric habit.

I never felt so happy in my life!" cried Bland, the tears streaming down his face; and immediately he relapsed into a soft apoplectic quaking:

“It is a relief, I confess !" whis

pered Twiller; and became again inarticulate.

"And so-you really that billOh! ha ha! ha!"

They both rolled back in their chairs, and made no effort to contain themselves.

"Which side is in ?" bleated Bland, in a helpless little voice.

"Who is premier ?" faintly demanded Twiller, while his eyes were only to be recognized by the tears that escaped from between the lids.

Delightful! Delightful!" cried the vicar, as he rose, his ribs unable to bear these repeated shocks of earthquake, and walked stamping about the room.

"I confess, Eusebius, to having a great load taken off my mind," said Twiller, hysterically, standing at the window, and endeavouring to re-open his eyes with the assistance of his pocket-handkerchief, "I have found in my friend a man after my own heart; as ignorant of politics, almost, as I am myself."

"And now, John Twiller, that we are exposed and disgraced-utterly and hopelessly disgraced in each other's eyes, we shall get on twice as comfortably for the future. Do you know I feel that I have more to say to you than ever! But just tell me, -is there a Church Bill in contemplation at all?"

A hopeless relapse into convulsions. "Come," at last interrupted Twiller, endeavouring to look serious, which gave him the appearance of being in violent grief, "come, Bland: let us take a round of the shrubbery, and be men."

:

The two friends felt relieved in the fresh air and although, now and then, a sudden suffusion of the face betrayed in one or the other a recurrence of the original struggle, they gradually fell into their usual vein of quiet unreserve, and became composed.

It needed, indeed, a vigorous effort to effect this,-at least on Twiller's part. When a jovial man is merry, it is natural and easy, and passes insensibly off into the ordinary mood. But when a man of melancholy temperament and grave physiognomy is betrayed into laughter, so many barriers are broken down, such havoc is made of the face and spirits, the temperament and features are so utterly

wrecked and dislocated, and the whole man is so thoroughly turned inside out, that the spectator occasionally feels a sentiment of alarm tempering his own hilarity, and secretly wishes that his friend's glee was less mountainous and volcanic.

Perhaps there was something of conscious humiliation, too, which helped both to recover themselves. Two grave men thus metamorphosed into drolls who would have excited a feeling akin to pity in the breast of anyone who might have happened to be standing by, was, to Twiller at least, who had some external humiliation to to bear up against, and some internal pride to feed, not without its mortification. As for Eusebius Bland, he had had the benefit of a hearty laugh, which reconciled him to all this; for it was his belief, that a convulsion of the kind helped him through the day as substantially as a breakfast.

"How does it happen, Bland," said Twiller, "that you who have your own troubles to depress you, contrive to keep yourself open to that state of mirthful excitement, which, when I experience it, convulses me so violently, as to alarm me for my own wits?"

"Just because I was born with a propensity for it, and never have had strength of mind, or whatever you choose to call it, to keep it under."

"Do you know, Eusebius, on me it inflicts pain while it lasts! I feel so little in common with the laughing thing within me, that I can at such times understand by experience, what is meant by a spirit entering into a person-by being possessed, in short."

Come, Twiller, surely you do not mean to take the 'laughing devil' out of the domain of metaphor?"

"To you, before whom I am disgraced, I may confess that I do ;and the "weeping devil" too, and the "blue devils," and devils of every hue, and every hoof. They as clearly possess us as we possess the house we live in; that is, they are separate, independent, and often counteracting existences, holding adverse possession, and easily to be distinguished by the possessed himself-more easily indeed by him than by others."

"Then," said Bland, "you would, in removing their identity with yourself, remove your own responsibility, as regards their doings with you?"

I rather think I should: but nothing is more difficult to discern than where one's self ends, and something or somebody else begins-in other words, the limits between responsibility and exemption. For we have, all of propensities, I admit, of the halfblood, as it were, with the lower angels, as we have likewise qualities claiming a sort of natural relationship with higher intelligences."

"St. Paul," said Bland, "understood all this, and has expressed it eloquently."

Though it disturbs his argument a little, if I may say so without offence."

"I think not," replied Blaud. "The Apostle's aim in the passage you allude to, seems to me to be to show, not that the law created the sin it denounced, but merely defined it, so as that the reason of man should detect its presence and nature, as well by reference to a recognized code, as by its own inherent intuitions. And this is shown by the ejaculation of despair placed by a figure in the mouth of the natural man- Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' being the cry of reason; to which the voice of revelation, also by a figure, so sweetly responds- I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' These exclamations appear to be framed as illustrative of the two states, those of nature and of grace; and then follows the comment

So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.""

"Still my dear friend, you cannot account for the subjection of the 'oversoul,' as Emerson calls it, to the admitted inferiority of man's individual and depraved nature. Let us suppose it is because, as Goldsmith gracefully expresses it, 'on the diverging road of life the passions drag us along, while reason only points the way.'

"Or because," added Bland, the principle of holiness is too ethereal for this gross material earthly nature of ours. It is a difficult air, like that of the mountain tops. We gasp for breath in the subtle atmosphere too near heaven, and rush down with suffocating haste amidst the fogs we are acclimated to."

"Madness," interrupted Twiller, who seemed to have been mentally following out his first idea," Mad