Part 2

A picnic was proposed, and agreed upon. We intended at first to go to Chambord; but there was danger of a crowd; and a valley on the road to Vendôme was pitched upon. A _calèche_ took us to the place, and set us down in a delightful meadow, enamelled with flowers, as all meadows are in poetry. A few great trees, forming almost a grove, shaded a slope near the banks of a sluggish stream that crept along between an avenue of poplars. Here the cloth was laid at once for breakfast; and whilst M. Jerome and the princess strolled away to talk of blighted hopes, Russia, serfdom, wedlock, and the conflagration of the Kremlin, Penelope made the necessary preparation; and I, in my character of a fidgety old gentleman, first advised and then assisted her. I am afraid the young damsel had designs upon my heart, for she put several questions to me on the state of vassalage in England; and when I developed succinctly the principles and advantages of our free constitution, and said some eloquent things that formed a French edition of 'Britons never shall be slaves,' she became quite enthusiastic; her cheeks flushed, her eyes brightened; and with a sort of Thervigne-de-Mericourt gesture, she cried: 'Vive la République!' This was scarcely the natural product of what I had said; but so lively a little creature, in her dainty lace-cap and flying pink ribbons, neat silk _caraco_, plaid-patterned gown, with pagoda sleeves, as she called them, and milk-white _manchettes_--her _bottines_ from the Rue Vivienne, and her face from Paradise--could reconcile many a harder heart than mine to greater incongruities. Our arrangements being made, therefore, I sat down on a camp-stool, whilst Penelope reclined on the grass; and I endeavoured to explain to her the great advantages of a moderate constitutional government, with checks, balances, and so forth. Although she yawned, I am sure it was not from ennui, but in order to shew me her pretty pearly teeth.

M. Jerome and the princess came streaming back over the meadow--even affected to scold me for having remained behind. They were evidently on the best possible terms, and I took great satisfaction in contemplating their happiness. Either my perspicacity was at fault, however, or both had some secret cause of uneasiness that pressed upon their minds as the day advanced. Had they been only betrayed into a declaration and a plighting of their troth in a hurry? Did they already repent? Did Madame de Mourairef regret the barbarous splendour of her native land? Did M. Jerome begin to mourn over the delights of bachelorship? These were the questions I put to myself without being able to invent any satisfactory answer. The day passed, however, pleasantly enough; and the calèche came in due time to take us back to Blois.

Next morning, M. Jerome entered my room with a graceful bow, to announce his departure for Paris, whither it was necessary for him to go to obtain the necessary papers for his marriage, and Madame de Mourairef, he added, accompanied him. I uttered the necessary congratulations, and gave my address in Paris, that he might call upon me as soon as he was settled in the hôtel he proposed to take.

'I take two persons with me,' he said, smiling; 'but one of them leaves her heart behind, I am afraid.'

This alluded to Penelope; but I was determined not to understand. I went to say adieu to Madame de Mourairef, who seemed rather excited and anxious. Penelope almost succeeded in wringing forth a tear; but I did not think it was decreed that at my age I should really make love to a Russian serf, however charming. So off they went to the railway station, leaving me in a very dull, stupid, melancholy mood.

'What a fortunate man M. Jerome is!' said the garçon, as he came into my room a few minutes afterwards.

'Yes,' I replied; 'Madame de Mourairef seems in every way worthy of him.'

'I should think so,' quoth he. 'It is not every waiter, however fascinating, that falls in with a Russian princess.'

'Waiter! M. Jerome!'

'Of course,' replied my informant. 'You seem surprised; but M. Jerome is really a waiter at the Café ----, on the Boulevard des Italiens; came down for his health. We were comrades once, and I promised to keep the secret, for he thought it extremely probable that he might meet a wealthy English lady here, who might fall in love with him--your countrywomen are so eccentric. He has found a Russian princess, which is better. I suppose we must now call him Monseigneur?'

Although, like the rest of my species, disposed to laugh at the misfortunes of my fellow-creatures, I confess that I pitied Madame de Mourairef; for I felt persuaded that M. Jerome had passed himself off as a very distinguished personage. However, there was no remedy, and I had no right to interfere in the matter. The lady, indeed, had been in an unpardonable hurry to be won, and must take the consequences.

In the afternoon, there was a great bustle in the hôtel, and half-a-dozen voices were heard doing the work of fifty. I went out into the passage, and caught the first fragments of an explanation that soon became complete. M. Alphonse, courier to M. de Mourairef, had arrived, and was indignantly maintaining that Sophie and Penelope, the two waiting-maids of the princess, had arrived at the Tête Noire, to take a suite of rooms for their mistress; whilst the landlord and his coadjutors, slow to comprehend, averred that the great lady had herself been there, and departed. The truth at length came out--that these two smart Parisian lasses, having a fortnight before them, had determined to give up their places, and play the mascarade which I have described. When M. and Madame de Mourairef, two respectable, middle-aged people, arrived, they were dismally made acquainted with the sacrilege that had been committed; but as no debts had been contracted in their name, and their letters came in a parcel by the post from Orleans, they laughed heartily at the joke, and enjoyed the idea that Sophie had been taken in.

The following winter, I went into a café newly established in the Rue Poissonière, and was agreeably surprised to see Sophie, the pseudo-princess, sitting behind the counter in magnificent toilette, receiving the bows and the money of the customers as they passed before her, whilst M. Jerome--exactly in appearance as before, except that prosperity had begun to round him--was leaning against a pillar in rather a melodramatic attitude, a white napkin gracefully depending from his hand. They started on seeing me, and were a little confused, but soon laughed over their adventure; called Penelope to take her turn at the counter--the little serf whispered to me as she passed, that I was 'a traitor, a barbarian,' and insisted on treating me to my coffee and my _petit verre_, free, gratis, for nothing.

MEMOIRS OF LORD JEFFREY.

In the crisis of the French Revolution, British society was paralysed with conservative alarms, and all tendency to liberal opinions, or even to an advocacy of the most simple and needful reforms, was met with a ruthless intolerance. In Scotland, there was not a public meeting for five-and-twenty years. In that night of unreflecting Toryism, a small band of men, chiefly connected with the law in Edinburgh, stood out in a profession of Whiggism, to the forfeiture of all chance of government patronage, and even of much of the confidence and esteem of society. Three or four young barristers were particularly prominent, all men of uncommon talents. The chief was Francis Jeffrey, who died in 1850, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, after having passed through a most brilliant career as a practising lawyer and judge, and one still more brilliant, as the conductor, for twenty-seven years, of the celebrated _Edinburgh Review_. Another was Henry Cockburn, who has now become the biographer of his great associate. It was verily a remarkable knot of men in many respects, but we think in none more than a heroic probity towards their principles, which were, after all, of no extravagant character, as was testified by their being permitted to triumph harmlessly in 1831-2. These men anticipated by forty years changes which were ultimately patronised by the great majority of the nation. They all throve professionally, but purely by the force of their talents and high character. As there was not any precisely equivalent group of men at any other bar in the United Kingdom, we think Scotland is entitled to take some credit to herself for her Jeffreys, her Cranstons, her Murrays, and her Cockburns: at least, she will not soon forget their names.

Lord Jeffrey--his judicial designation in advanced life--was of respectable, but not exalted parentage. After a careful education at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Oxford, he entered at the bar in 1793, when not yet much more than twenty years of age. His father, being himself a Tory, desired the young lawyer to be so too, seeing that it would be favourable to his prospects; but he could not yield in this point to paternal counsel. The consequence was, that this able man practised for ten years without gaining more than L. 100 per annum. All this time, he cultivated his mind diligently, and was silently training himself for that literary career which he subsequently entered upon. His talents were at that time known only to a few intimates: there were peculiarities about him, which prevented him from being generally appreciated up to his deserts. His figure, to begin with, was almost ludicrously small. Then, in his anxiety to get rid of the Scottish accent, he had contracted an elocution intended to be English, but which struck every one as most affected and offensive. His manners were marked by levity, and his conversation to many seemed flippant. His literary musings also acted unfavourably on the solicitors, the leading patrons of young counsellors. Reduced by dearth of business almost to despair, he had at one time serious thoughts of flinging himself upon the London press for a subsistence. The first smile of fortune beamed upon him in 1802, when the _Edinburgh Review_ was started--a work of which he quickly assumed the management. That it brought him income and literary renown, we gather from Lord Cockburn's pages; but we do not readily find it explained how. While more declaredly a literary man than ever, he now advanced rapidly at the bar, and quickly became a man of wealth and professional dignity. We suspect that, after all that is said of the effect of literary pursuits on business prospects, the one success was a consequence in great measure of the other.

The value of this work rests, in our opinion, on the illustration which it presents of the possibility of a man of sound though unpopular opinions passing through life, not merely without suffering greatly from the wrath of society, but in the enjoyment of some of its highest honours. After reading this book, one could almost suppose it to be a delusion that the world judges hardly of any man's speculative opinions, while his life remains pure, and his heart manifestly is alive to all the social charities. The heroic consistency of Jeffrey is the more remarkable, when it now appears that he was a gentle and rather timid man, keenly alive to the sympathies of friends and neighbours--indeed, of _womanish_ character altogether. As is well known, his time arrived at last, when, on the coming of the Whigs into power in 1830, he was raised to the dignified situation of Lord Advocate for Scotland, and was called upon to take the lead, officially, in making those political changes which he had all along advocated. It is curious, however, and somewhat startling, to learn how little gratification he professed to feel in what appeared so great a triumph. While his rivals looked with envy on his exaltation, and mobs deemed it little enough that he should be entirely at their beck in requital for the support they gave him, Mr Jeffrey was sighing for the quiet of private life, groaning at his banishment from a happy country-home, and not a little disturbed by the troubled aspect of public affairs. Mr Macaulay has somewhere remarked on the general mistake as to the 'sweets of office.' We are assured by Lord Cockburn, that Jeffrey would have avoided the advocateship if he could. He accepted it only from a feeling of duty to his party. He writes to a female relation of the 'good reason I have for being sincerely sick and sorry at an elevation for which so many people are envying, and thinking me the luckiest and most elevated of mortals for having attained.' And this subject is still further illustrated by an account he gives of the conduct of honest Lord Althorpe during the short interval in May 1832, when the Whigs were _out_. 'Lord Althorpe,' he says, 'has gone through all this with his characteristic cheerfulness and courage. The day after the resignation, he spent in a great sale-garden, choosing and buying flowers, and came home with five great packages in his carriage, devoting the evening to studying where they should be planted in his garden at Althorpe, and writing directions and drawing plans for their arrangement. And when they came to summon him to a council on the Duke's giving in, he was found in a closet with a groom, busy oiling the locks of his fowlingpieces, and lamenting the decay into which they had fallen during his ministry.'

In some respects, the book will create surprise, particularly as to the private life and character of the great Aristarch. While the _Edinburgh Review_ was in progress under the care of Mr Jeffrey, it was a most unrelenting tribunal for literary culprits, as well as a determined assertor of its own political maxims. The common idea regarding its chief conductor represented him as a man of extraordinary sharpness, alternating between epigrammatic flippancy and democratic rigour. Gentle and refined feeling would certainly never have been attributed to him. It will now be found that he was at all times of his life a man of genial spirit towards the entire circle of his fellow-creatures--that his leading tastes were for poetry and the beautiful in external nature, particularly fine scenery--that he revelled in the home affections, and was continually saying the softest and kindest things to all about him--a lamb, in short, while thought a lion. The local circle in which he lived was somewhat limited and exclusive, partly, perhaps, in consequence of having been early shut in upon itself by its dissent from the mass of society on most public questions; but in this circle Jeffrey was adored by men, women, and children alike, on account of his extreme kindliness of disposition. He was almost, to a ridiculous degree, dependent on the love of his friends; and the terms in which he addresses some of them, particularly ladies, sound odd in this commonsense world. Thus, the wife of one of his friends is, 'My sweet, gentle, and long-suffering Sophia.' He pours out his very heart to his correspondents, and with an effect which would reconcile to him the most irascible author he ever scarified. Thus, to his daughter, who had just left him with her husband:--'I happened to go up stairs, and passing into our room, saw the door open of that little one where _you_ used to sleep, and the very bed waiting there for you, so silent and desolate, that all the love, and the _miss_ of you, which fell so sadly on my heart the first night of your desertion, came back upon it so heavily and darkly, that I was obliged to shut myself in, and cry over the recollection, as if all the interval had been annihilated, and that loss and sorrow were still fresh and unsubdued before me; and though the fit went off before long, I feel still that I must vent my heart by telling you of it, and therefore sit down now to write all this to you, and get rid of my feelings, that would otherwise be more likely to haunt my vigils of the night.' Thus, on the death of a sister in his early days:--'A very heavy blow upon us all, and much more so on me than I had believed possible. The habit of seeing her almost every day, and of living together intimately since our infancy, had wound so many threads of affection round my heart, that when they were burst at once, the shock was almost overwhelming. Then, the unequalled gentleness of her disposition, the unaffected worth of her affections, and miraculous simplicity of character and manners, which made her always appear as pure and innocent as an infant, took so firm, though gentle a hold on the heart of every one who approached her, that even those who have been comparatively strangers to her worth, have been greatly affected by her loss.... During the whole of her illness, she looked beautiful; and when I gazed upon her the moment after she had breathed her last, as she lay still, still, and calm, with her bright eyes half closed, and her red lips half open, I thought I had never seen a countenance so lovely. A statuary might have taken her for a model. Poor, dear love! I kissed her cold lips, and pressed her cold, wan, lifeless hand, and would willingly at that moment have put off my own life too, and followed her. When I came here, the sun was rising, and the birds were singing gaily, as I sobbed along the empty streets.'

The sensibility of Jeffrey to all fine expression that comes to us through the medium of literature was intense, most so in his latter days, when his whole character seems to have undergone a mellowing process. While pining under his greatness as Lord Advocate, and an authority in parliament (1833), he says: 'If it were not for my love of beautiful nature and poetry, my heart would have died within me long ago. I never felt before what immeasurable benefactors these same poets are to their kind, and how large a measure, both of actual happiness and prevention of misery, they have imparted to the race. I would willingly give up half my fortune, and some little fragments of health and bodily enjoyment that yet remain to me, rather than that Shakspeare should not have lived before me.' Who that had only read his lively, acute articles in the formal Review, could have believed him to be so deeply sympathetic with an unfortunate poet, as he shews in the following fine passage in one of his letters (1837)? 'In the last week, I have read all Burns's Life and Works--not without many tears, for the life especially. What touches me most, is the pitiable poverty in which that gifted being (and his noble-minded father) passed his early days--the painful frugality to which their innocence was doomed, and the thought how small a share of the useless luxuries in which we (such comparatively poor creatures) indulge, would have sufficed to shed joy and cheerfulness in their dwellings, and perhaps to have saved that glorious spirit from the trials and temptations under which he fell so prematurely. Oh! my dear Empson, there must be something _terribly_ wrong in the present arrangements of the universe, when those things can happen, and be thought natural. I could lie down in the dirt, and cry and grovel there, I think, for a century, to save such a soul as Burns from the suffering, and the contamination, and the _degradation_, which these same arrangements imposed upon him; and I fancy that, if I could but have known him, in my present state of wealth and influence, I might have saved, and reclaimed, and preserved him, even to the present day. He would not have been so old as my brother-judge, Lord Glenlee, or Lord Lynedoch, or a dozen others that one meets daily in society. And what a creature, not only in genius, but in nobleness of character, potentially at least, if right models had been put _gently_ before him!'

The narrative of Lord Cockburn occupies only one volume, the other being filled with a selection from Lord Jeffrey's letters. It is a brief chronicle of the subject; many will feel it to be unsatisfactorily slight. The author seems to have been afraid of becoming tedious. It is, however, a manly and faithful narration, with the rare merit of going little, if at all, beyond bounds in its appreciation of the hero or his associates, or the importance of the circumstances in which he moved. The sketches of some of Jeffrey's contemporaries, as John Clerk, Sir Harry Moncreiff, and Henry Erskine, are vigorous pieces of painting, which will suggest to many a desire that the author should favour the public with a wider view of the men and things of Scotland in the age just past. With a natural partiality as a friend and as a biographer, he seems to us to set too high an estimate on Jeffrey when he ranks him as one of a quartett, including Dugald Stewart, Sir Walter Scott, and Dr Chalmers, 'each of whom in literature, philosophy, or policy, caused great changes,' and 'left upon his age the impression of the mind that produced them.' Few of his countrymen would claim this rank for either Jeffrey or Stewart. Jeffrey, no doubt, raised a department of our literature from a low to a high level; he was a Great Voice in his day. But he produced nothing which can permanently affect us; he gave no great turn to the sentiments or opinions of mankind. His only original effort of any mark, is his exposition of the association theory of beauty, which rests on a simple mistake of what is pleasing for what is beautiful, and is already nothing. We suspect that no man with his degree of timidity will ever be very great, either as a philosopher or as a man of deeds. He was a brilliant _writer_--the most brilliant, and, with one exception, the most versatile in his age; but to this we would limit his panegyric, apart from the glory of his long and consistent career as a politician, which we think can scarcely be overestimated.

So many of the most remarkable passages of the work have been already hackneyed through the medium of the newspapers, that we feel somewhat at a loss to present any which may have a chance of being new to our readers. So early as his twentieth year, we find Mr Jeffrey thus sensibly expressing himself on an important subject:--

'There is nothing in the world I detest so much as companions and acquaintances, as they are called. Where intimacy has gone so far as to banish reserve, to disclose character, and to communicate the reality of serious opinions, the connection may be the source of much pleasure--it may ripen into friendship, or subside into esteem. But to know half a hundred fellows just so far as to speak, and walk, and lounge with them; to be acquainted with a multitude of people, for all of whom together you do not care one farthing; in whose company you speak without any meaning, and laugh without any enjoyment; whom you leave without any regret, and rejoin without any satisfaction; from whom you learn nothing, and in whom you love nothing--to have such a set for your society, is worse than to live in absolute solitude; and is a thousand times more pernicious to the faculties of social enjoyment, by circulating in its channels a stream so insipid.'