in it. My own temperament and nature are - Pericles, Xenophon, Themistocles, Scipio, so given to boldness, not to say rashness, and Marius, Cæsar, Hannibal, Alexander, Narses; my studies, which of late years have been the great moderns Charlemagne, Alfred, entirely with the doings of the great men at the Plantagenets, Sixtus the Fifth, Ximenes, the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, may induce m to overrate boldness. A man who has passed a great part of the last years, as I have, in studying the despatches of Cortes, is not likely to be enamored of timid counsels. But then this error, as I conceive it to be, this want of boldness, is quite as visible in civil as in military affairs. Carry to a statesman of the present day any good plan providing a remedy for some great abuse, for which he is bound to find a remedy. He will listen to you patiently, then take a sly glance over his shoulder at the clock (which glance, however, the deputation are meant to perceive). He will say something to this effect:-"You are quite right; the abuse is very great. I am sure, I grieve over it. Your plan, too, is excellent. But there are many objections to it. I doubt whether we can be sure of its succeeding. I doubt whether, in the present state of public affairs, &c., &c., I doubt whether, in the present temper of the House of Commons, &c., &c. But, gentlemen (another glance at the clock, not so furtive), if you would have the goodness to put your views in writing, they shall meet with all due consideration at the hands of Her Majesty's Government." Bows are then interchanged. "How do you do, Lord A?" (this to the head of the deputation). "I hope Lady A- is going on well. I am so glad to hear it's a boy. Good morning, gentlemen." The deputation retires. Richelieu (I take the names just as they come into my head), Cortes, Henry the Fourth, Frederick of Prussia, Clive, Chatham, Cromwell; is not boldness the very breath of their life in such characters ? Would not the newspapers, and the clubs, and society in general have had many unpleasant comments to make upon these men? And would they have been quelled by such comments, if they had the greatness in them which I believe they had? Ellesmere. You have banged us about with such a lot of great names, that I hardly know where I am. One thing I am certain of, that some of your great characters would, occasionally, have figured in the police reports as well as in the leading articles. But all of them, in one way or other, would have afforded plenty of occasion for comments. less than seven of the most scurrilous amongst religious papers would have lived upon the doings of Pericles. Not Milverton. But he would have gone on doing. I tell you that I see this doating upon assured success, this love of unimpeachability, even in our charities. They too must be perfectly prudent, they too must be exactly wise, they too must succeed. How different to the noble words, "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days." I have made a long tirade, but it may all be expressed in few words. We are afraid of doing something, for fear it might be wrong, for fear it might be blamed, not seeing what evil there may be in doing nothing. The minister knows the thing ought to be done. But year after year his want of boldness, his anxiety to see his way, as he calls it, his desire to be safe, prevents the thing But what I have just said does not apply being undertaken. And so we have safe to the management of the present war parmen everywhere, safe admirals safe ticularly, but to the conduct of all of us, to bishops. the present generation, to the present century. It results, too, from many good things: from a strong desire to have a fair character; from a great wish to do nothing wrong; from an anxiety to go through life blamelessly. Of course we cannot always act with vigor when we are weighing nice responsibilities. Let me pause for a moment. I have not quite worked out what I mean to say. It is the desire of being unimpeachable that deadens men's energies, from the highest to the lowest. We hate to be commented upon by newspapers. Any man, however, who cared deeply about his work, would be beyond and above newspapers. Call back the great men of former ages, David, Solomon, St. Paul, St. Augustin, St. Cyprian; the great ancients Finally (for I see I am making a long speech), though I must admit we have plenty of cause for self-condemnation, we have, I think, at the same time, every reason to be hopeful for this country. The good and I am delighted, my dear Milverton, to find sound spirit which has been shown through- you so rational. It is far beyond my hopes out all classes, the anxiety to do right which and expectations. [Here ELLESMERE began to has been manifested, the calm, I might almost dance again, and the girls to laugh immodersay the cruel, way in which we have exposed ately.] and analyzed our own faults and shortcom- Dunsford. For goodness' sake, Ellesmere, ings, the personal bravery which the British behave yourself. Here are some of our have shown, the absence of all malignant excellent allies coming to the windows. feeling towards our enemy, the heartiness of [ELLESMERE suddenly subsided into propriety of our feeling towards our brave allies, are all demeanor.] to me sources of the highest confidence. Ellesmere. Yes, yes! I must behave Those who pretend to see, and who cer- myself. We must do everything here to tainly wish to see, symptoms of decadence in make ourselves agreeable, and not ridiculous. this great people, may fancy that they per- Henceforward you shall see in me the grave ceive such things. For my own part, I never deportment of a man who has once been Her felt more happy and more proud to be an Majesty's Solicitor-General. Now this alliEnglishman than I have in the years eighteen ance, which has made us find out that hundred and fifty-four and eighteen hundred Englishmen and Frenchmen, need not be and fifty-five. [Here ELLESMERE began to hereditary enemies, is an indescribable benefit, dance what I call his war-dance, which consists—is equal, in my opinion, to the discovery in "pirouetting," I believe they call it, but of Australia. O! I will be so decorous all which chiefly seems to be executed by one leg, the time that we are in France. They shall and is to my mind more like a succession of see what a solid fellow (solid is a favorite averted tumbles than dancing.] word of theirs) an English lawyer can be. Ellesmere. Hurrah! hurrah! a great [Here ELLESMERE walked away to his rooms event! Let the town-crier perform a fantasia | with a dignity and gravity which well became on the bell, and call all good people to wit- his handsome presence. Once he turned round ness that here is a philosopher who for once to wink at us; but his march was for the most in his life, and on one subject, does not pre- part very stately. And so the conversation tend to be wiser than commonplace people. ended.] the beflounced, bemantled, and bebonneted beauty in all the colors of the rainbow spread out before him,- full fig. to all intents and purposes. R. W. HACKWOOD. In reply as to this slang expression, I venture to suggest that it may allude to the primitive dress of our first parents, and their concealment of themselves because they were naked: fig standing for "fig-leaf; " and "full fig" meaning such a dress as enables you to exhibit yourself without shame. FULL FIG.I am afraid your correspondent, | "love of a mantle;" and that, after passing who seeks an explanation of this term, must be through a few more stages, "No. 10, full an old bachelor, or long ago he must have ob-fig. (ure)" would display to his admiring gaze served his "better half" periodically poring a perfect realization of the term as he uses it, in over some ladies' magazine, and devouring the fashions set forth in all their gorgeous array on the curious, smiling, distressingly pinkfaced and kiss-me-quick representations of the fair sex therein depicted; at which bewitching figures, if he had had the curiosity and courage to take a nearer glance, he would most probably have found that the full-blown countenance protruding from an apparatus like a foreshortened strawberry-pottle bedecked with ribbons and flowers, in present specimens, or enshrined in a straw coal-scuttle in times gone by, was labelled The Italians have an expression, "in fiocchi," "No. 1, Head Dress," or "Bonnet à la Some- corresponding exactly with "in full fig." The body or Something." Continuing his exam- substantive fiocci signifies "a tassel; ination he would have found "No. 2, Demi-abito coi fiocchi" is "a coat with tassels or tags fig. (ure)" to be the " portrait of a lady " with on it: " and hence, to be in fiocchi means "to her neck twisted in some impossible manner, be in full dress." Can fig be a corruption of so as to exhibit the beauties of the back part of this? the before-figured pottle, and the front of some STYLITES. un - Notes and Queries. From Chambers' Journal. HISTORICAL WORDS. THERE are recorded, in the history of mankind, many words with which everybody is acquainted, and in the genuineness of which everybody believes. Sometimes the whole signification of a great event lies, so to say, hidden in them. They give vent to a common and public feeling, and therefore they are accepted by high and low, with no more distrust than the fact itself to which they refer. Antiquity has transmitted to succeeding ages many words, both simple and sublime, worthy of the deeds of the heroes of the time. In this case, inquiry is of no avail, and we must accept all such sayings as truthful traditions. All we are able to do is, to examine whether the words attributed to Alexander, Pericles, Cincinnatus, or Cæsar, are worthy of these great men; and if we find they could have said so, why, they did say so. But, happily or not for the time of the moderns, historical criticism is there less difficult; and it is really curious to inquire whether the words which are attributed to high persons, especially to crowned heads, were truly uttered by them. No history abounds more than that of France in historical sayings-in mots, as the French say; and in no other country does a single word, when appropriate to the circumstances, produce so much sensation. Yet it so happens, that scarcely any of these famous mots are authentic; and, strange as it may seem, it is precisely those that are received without question that are the most false. Who has not read, in the appalling history of the execution of Louis XVI., the beautiful sentence put in the mouth of the Abbé Edgeworth when the unfortunate monarch was on the point of receiving the deadly blow of the guillotine : "Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven!" Have 66 It would be an easy task to demonstrate that the greater number of the words put in the mouth of Napoleon Bonaparte are nothing but popular fiction. But go to the farm and the workshop; there, the cry of the sentry —“ And if you are the Petit Caporal, you shall not pass" and other familiar discourses between diers, are more readily believed than the address the mighty emperor and his affectionate solat the foot of the Pyramids or the adieu of Fontainebleau. There exist thick volumes full of apocryphal Napoleon anecdotes in this respect, he is inferior to none, not even to Frederick the Great of Prussia. : There is also a word commonly attributed to the celebrated General Kleber, who succeeded Bonaparte in Egypt as commander-in-chief, and who is said, by nearly all the historians, to have flattered the future dictator by exclaiming, "You are as great as the world." The truth is, that the simple and heroic Kleber never uttered these words; for he, like his republican colleagues, Desaix and Alexandre Dumas, foresaw and feared the ambitious designs of the talented Corsican. General Alexandre Dumas at least the father of the illustrious romance-writeralways denied the statement; and it is certain that he, the gallant friend of Kleber, Desaix, Augereau, and Brune, lived and died under the first empire greatly neglected. character. Every history of the two French We come now to an anecdote of a more pleasing restorations of 1814 and 1815 relates that the Duc d'Artois, afterwards King Charles X., in making his entrée into Paris, pronounced the words: "Nothing is changed in France; there is only one Frenchman more." in the mouth of a prince returning from exile, Happy words and happy the Bourbons if they had always kept these words in mind! But, here again, we must declare that this promising sentence was never uttered. The famous Talleyrand, of cunning memory, had in the evening of that eventful day a rather select party assembled at his hôtel, and asked the company, as a matter of course: "What did the prince say? general answer was: "Nothing at all." "But," exclaimed the sly diplomatist, "he must have said something; " and addressing a well-known political writer, he continued: "B The we not all, on hearing these pious and exalted words, been touched to the heart; and did one of us ever doubt the accuracy of the record? The priest must have said so, is the common notion. Not only did all the important historians of the French Revolution, M. Thiers included, vouch for the accuracy of that scene, but, whether in the hut or the palace, in the home of the republican or of the royalist, every-a wit; go into my closet and make a mot." body takes the words of the Abbé Edgeworth for granted truth. And, nevertheless, the worthy clergyman declared publicly in writing, more than thirty years ago, that the words were a mere invention: he never uttered them on the scaffold of the Place de la Révolution. And yet, in spite of that public declaration, the touching farewell is still repeated again and again. For critics, it is no more an historical saying, but the rest of the nation take it as such, and thereby give expression merely to their own feeling. -, you are B- went, and came back three times; his wit was at fault, and his ideas did not satisfy the company. At last he returned a fourth time, and pronounced with triumphant emphasis the above-mentioned patriotic words: Nothing is changed in France; there is only one Frenchman more." Talleyrand applauded : the Duc d'Artois had found his mot; and the next day the papers made it known to the world, and, as an old French author says, "In this manner history is written." I company. Everybody else, he said, made amongst you learned and philosophic men, am kicked about like a foot-ball. I suppose some silly or impertinent jest. you have some fine name for that process, which quite takes it out of the nature of discourtesy. Ellesmere. I have long seen that Milverton considers himself one of the few gentlemen left; and that the rest of us form one wide, waste, howling wilderness of snobs. Milverton. My dear Sir John (we will Milverton. You may sneer, Ellesmere, always give him his title for the future), one but, if asking the fewest possible questions, measures the stroke by the rebound. You making the fewest impertinent comments, are an attackative animal. If we did not and being always on the watch, lest my inti- reply sharply to you, you would imagine that macy with any one should suppress my cour- your attacks had been feeble. We, therefore, tesy towards him, constitute any part of a reply to you somewhat sharply sometimes, in gentleman, I lay claim to that part. One order to persuade you that your attacks have must speak up for one's self sometimes. Now not been feeble. We do it in a spirit of the your treatise Ellesmere. And the deepest satire. Thank you all for your great consideration. I suppose Miss Mildred is actuated by the same charitable motives. I knew that in this sublime company fine words would never be wanting, whatever else might be. on Contingent Remainders highest courtesy. (Ellesmere, gentlemen, is one of those judicious men who have always some great book on hand, which never appears) have I ever asked you a question about it? As you are silent on the subject, I suppose you to be worried by some Contingent Remainder which will not fall into the right track; and I avoid Milverton. Ah, I assure you I am quite asking any question which might be disagree- in earnest. I do not know of any things that able. are more abused in this world than intimacy, Ellesmere. You do not care about the friendship, relationship, companionship. I matter: you will never look at the book have written, I trust, my last essay, but when it does come which will be shortly, perhaps in seven years. Milverton. Yes, I shall. I shall look at the preface, and see whether anything occurs to me to suggest for a second edition, Great lawyers sometimes fail to write good English. Then I shall endeavor to ascertain what a Contingent Remainder is whether it is animal, mineral, or vegetable; and then I shall put the book down-proud of it, and prouder still of you. Dunsford. The Duke of Wellington Ellesmere. Now we are going to have one of Dunsford's tremendous jumps in con versation. if Ellesmere, Thank goodness. Let the world say grace over that announcement. Your essays were a little better than sermons - they were shorter. As, however, frail human nature always sees great merit in suffering, it reads serious books, and, of course, looks out for the least dull amongst them. But they were dull, my dear fellow. Milverton. Well, my great objection to them is not their dulness, though I admit that, but that such writing tends to place the writer in a dignified and seemingly virtuous position, which, in my case certainly, the writer had no business whatever to occupy. Dunsford. I do not admit that. most.' Dunsford. The Duke of Wellington told Colonel Gurwood, who in a day or two after-"He best shall paint them who has felt them wards told a gentleman, whose son, one of my pupils, told me (I like a good voucher for a story), that over familiarity had been the cause of more friendships being broken off than anything else. And without any great duke to back me up, I say that friends cannot be too courteous to one another, and that courtesy never hindered love. Midhurst (aside). There is not much of that to hinder. Ellesmere. Then how do you account for your conduct to me? When I venture Who so fit to write about errors, passions, follies, as the man who has felt them, suffered from them, transacted them? Perhaps the reason that men of my cloth write so ill, as you wits say we do, is that, in the main, they are such good men. Ellesmere. Well, this surpasses anything I have ever heard in audacity. The quiet way in which Dunsford has brought round this conversation to a sort of beatification of the clergy is something stupendous. Milverton. There is a great deal of truth us lasting lessons in humanity, and do not in what he says, though. write essays. Mildred. Butif I may interrupt, and suggest that any of you wise, logical men-creatures ever wander from the subject, may I ask upon what subject we might have had one more "last essay"? Milverton. Ellesmere is not fond, himself, of teasing, that is one comfort. But what you say of animals, Ellesmere, reminds me of something I was going to ask you. You know how quickly and easily you lawyers Milverton. Upon teasing, my dear. make money, when you have once got to the Ellesmere. Pray give us the heads of it, top of the tree: now, will you give the next Milverton; especially if so doing will prevent hundred guineas you earn to the Society the thing itself being written. But I always which there is for protecting animals? I will distrust you didactic writers. Virtuous or add five to it; and if you knew the difficulty vicious, modest or presuming, you are always with which we poor devils of authors get breaking into didaction. Confine yourself money, and the love which we have for therefore to heads, and when you come to spending it recklessly, you would not think Seventeenthly," and "To conclude," do I am asking you to give disproportionably conclude, instead of beginning again with ap- much. parently renewed energy, and thus driving your hearers to despair. Milverton. Well, I should show how teasing pervaded all societies, boys' schools, girls' schools, private families, the men in factories-in workshops-on cab-stands-in Boards-in Parliaments. I should endeavor to show the base cowardliness of it, the immense unkindness; how, veil it as you please, it is the many against one. Ellesmere. Consider, my dear fellow, the good we do, and the evil that for the most part you do. But I will give the money. certainly is a most creditable Society. That Mildred. I am quite out of my province, Midhurst. There is the closest connection, Ellesmere. Just my case; just what I suf- Dunsford. Please write all this out for me, Milverton, some day. Ellesmere. I like the part about animals. As the King of Portugal said when our great animal painter was introduced to him, "I am so glad to know you, sir; I am so fond of beasts." be. 66 strategical," Dunsford. How can you jest, Ellesmere, upon such subjects? And, if I might say a word in answer to this gentleman [bowing to MR. MIDHURST], I think, considering all the hardships and agonies that thousands of brave men are undergoing just at present, it is hardly the time to be dilating upon minor By the way, good painters give miseries. |