Though very young when first saw that princess, I shall never forget the expression of her beautiful countenance as I one day met her, when walking with my governess in the gardens of Versailles. She was dressed in a simple robe of dimity, with a straw hat on her head, in which was a single bunch of artificial flowers. Her attendants were few; and there was in her countenance an almost infantine expression of ease and sweetness, which formed a painful contrast with the portraits taken of this unhappy princess in later life, when the world had finished that work of corruption which we are well informed was too successfully begun in the court of her ambitious mother; when the caprices of fashion had destroyed her native simplicity; and after her mind had been inflamed with passion and harassed by fatigue.

About three years ago, when again visiting Versailles in order to weep over the wreck of former magnificence, I saw a small portrait of the little Dauphiness on her first arrival in France; it was inclosed in a shabby frame, and had been thrown aside with other old lumber, in an underground apartment of the palace. In this portrait, the same infantine tenderness was visible; and though the features seemed scarcely yet to have obtained their due proportion, yet there was an air of harmlessness and sweet inexperience cast over the whole figure, which made my heart bleed at every pore, and led me to the indulgence of an encouraging persuasion, that the tragic end of this ill-fated princess was probably preceded by such convictions of the vanity of human life, as might haply fit her for a better world. But to pass from these touching reflections, and to descend into more ordinary life.

Though still somewhat allied to the pomp of courts, many of my early years, as I before said, were passed at Versailles, where my father had a country-house. Though I have myself been a great traveller on the Continent, I never saw a palace which conveyed to my mind such an idea of regal pomp as that of Versailles. I doubt whether it may be asserted that the building is in a good taste; I believe that it is not generally allowed to be so: nevertheless the eye is struck with its magnificent extent, the profusion of sculpture with which it is enriched, the magnitude of its columns, porticoes, terraces, balustrades,

and other architectural ornaments; all of which may be more easily conceived than described. The old-fashioned gardens, too, are not without their imposing effect; the various long walks, some straight, some winding, are separated one from another by little coppices or groves, (for we have not a word in English to describe the ornamented bosquet of the French,) in which grottoes charm and fountains play, and where all the caprices of the heathen mythology are represented in groups of marble or of bronze; the various lakes and basins of clear water, each adorned with its triton or water-nymph, its dolphin or its mermaid; the gardens of orange-trees; the avenues of tilleul; the groves of myrtle; the stairs of stone, descending from terrace to terrace, ornamented with balustrades; the marble effigies of kings and heroes of other times-all present in one point of view so much to amuse the fancy, and to confound all sense of ordinary life and the real state of man on earth, that the youthful individual must be cold indeed, or raised in no ordinary degree above earthly things, who can live at Versailles without receiving many corrupt impressions and entertaining many erroneous ideas.

There is to be found, for the most part, about the courts of kings, a spirit of intrigue or gossip, which requires all the circumstance of splendour attending such places to preserve it in any degree from the low character which never fails to accompany it in every other modification of life. This spirit is equally blended, in general, with flattery and detraction, and few minds are found sufficiently exalted to rise wholly above it. Hence the characters about every court are commonly of the most ordinary kind, agitated by the lowest passions, and excited by the meanest motives. Nor indeed is it possible that the immediate attendants and companions of earthly kings should ever be enabled to triumph completely over the low feelings of envy and ambition, until they are actuated by the fear of Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords.

But it was not in the court of Louis the Sixteenth that characters remarkable for piety were to be looked for; since, among those persons who formed this society, there were few distinguished above the rest by any ideas which were not of the commonest order. There were, indeed, a few literary men-some individuals who read and thought

-and among this number was my father. But, as he has since said of himself, his intellectual pleasures had no reference whatever to religion; and though by no means an avowed infidel, or an open enemy of his God, it never once occurred to him, that the word of God could be made of the slightest use in enlightening and clearing the intellect, or improving the taste: and as to its power, under the divine blessing, of correcting the heart and controlling the passions, it was an idea which never could have suggested itself to his mind in the state in which he then was; for the natural man receiveth not these things.

My father, however, read much; and, pursuing the bent given him at the University, he particularly devoted himself to the classics, together with all such books as are in any way connected with that study. And if he gained no other advantage from this plan of reading, it served to pass his time in a less hurtful way, in some respects, than it might otherwise have been employed in: it kept him at home; it led him to associate with those of the court who were not entirely sunk into modern frivolities; and it preserved him from entering into that very low stile of conversation which I have described as prevailing in the habitations of kings. The society also which frequented his house was of a literary description, men of wit and quickness; yet probably shallow, though I am not authorized to say thus much; and it is highly probable that, had they not been recommended to him by their intellectual endowments, their society would have had few charms for my father.

Though my mother was never accustomed to speak much, yet she laid little restraint on me; and I can well remember, when I was about eight years of age, that I used to steal into the saloon, where my father was entertaining his friends, and actually to make my way through the circle to his knees. Situated in this my place of safety, from which I knew that no one would dare to force me, I used to listen to much that passed; and once in particular I ventured to make such remarks, that a certain abbe, a friend, or rather frequent companion, of my father's, expressed in my presence his regret that a child of such talents, as he was pleased to say I possessed, should be brought up under an ordinary governess." Give your

daughter," said he, "a classical education; cultivate her taste by presenting the finest models of composition to her examination; enrich her fancy with the beauties of ancient authors; allow her not to read any modern writers which are not of the same school; and be assured that your daughter will, one day or other, surpass the most celebrated females of her age."

I do not pretend that I should have recollected the whole of this speech from the first hearing of it, and that at so early an age as my ninth year, had it not often been repeated by my father; although we are very ready, even in our most tender years, to receive and understand that which we think redounds to our own honour.

But notwithstanding the good abbe, in the plenitude of his politeness, had thought proper to invest me with such extraordinary talents, I am not aware that any such really existed. I know not that there was any thing out of the common way in me, excepting that I undoubtedly inherit in some degree that vivid imagination which always enabled my father to seize, and as it were to make his own, all such poetical images as were presented to him through the medium of words, of sculpture, of painting, or of scenic representation; although the power of combining these afresh, and arranging them in new and striking forms, (which power we honour with the name of invention,) was not equally bestowed upon him. But however this might be, my beloved father, being encouraged by the abbe, and finding that much leisure remained to him after discharging the various functions of his office in the suit of the ambassador of the English court, resolved to employ himself in the cultivation of my mind, excusing himself for not having provided the same means of instruction for his elder daughter, who was still with her grandmother, upon the plea that her countenance, though mild and amiable, exhibited in infancy no promising symptoms of genius.

Thus having quieted his feelings of duty towards his first-born, my dear father lost no time in procuring for me such a tutor as should bring me through the drudgery of Latin and Greek. This tutor was to ground me well in grammar, and while he led me gently forward through this stony road, my father never omitted any occasion of opening my mind to the beauties of the classics; the

more elegant passages of the heathen mythology; the fabulous histories of ancient heroes, kings, and demi-gods; as well as the brilliant actions and heroic sentiments of the most celebrated personages of those periods of ancient history which are not concealed beneath the cloak of fable. or the mists of doubt.

Many of these lessons were given me in the highly decorated environs of Versailles, or in those parts of the palace into which we had admittance-in the halls of the Louvre-in the gardens of the Thuilleries and the Luxemburg-in the pleasure-grounds of Marly-and other places in the neighbourhood of Paris; and assuredly had I been born at Rome itself, before the name of Jesus had extended beyond the precincts of his native land, I could not have enjoyed (if such a word be not ill used in this place) better opportunities of studying the figures, attributes, and characters of the heathen divinities, than those which I possessed in and near the capital of His Most Christian Majesty.

I was at that time too young to be introduced into company, and there was no enjoyment which I could conceive to be greater than walking with my parents in the gardens of Versailles, and listening to my father's conversation; for his lessons were at that time always given through the medium of conversation, and generally taken from the objects which presented themselves; and there can be no doubt but that lessons thus given and thus brought before the eye, are not easily forgotten. Is it possible for me to forget the outlines of the history of the son of Jupiter and Latona, when that history was given me as I stood in the very presence as it were of the demi-god himself, in that beautiful grove of Versailles where three exquisite groups are placed in a grotto formed out of an enormous rock, the entrance of which represents the palace of Thetis?-in the centre is the celestial hero himself, accompanied by six nymphs; the two other groups representing tritons watering the horses of the sun. These last figures are reckoned chief-d'œuvres of the art of sculpture, and seem to be inhaling with fiery nostrils the waters which on days of high festivity gush in torrents from the rock. Or could I lose the recollection of the various adventures of Bacchus, Diana, or Mars, when every perfection of painting and ta