and where, on pain of ridicule, it is forbidden to think, to sing, to fight, to live, to die, to mount to the sky, or to descend to Tartarus, but for a woman." Mr. Thomas thus sums up his account of the manners of the time of Louis XIV: “ They were characterized by voluptuousness united with decency; activity turned towards intrigue, slight knowledge, many accomplishments, a fine politeness: the women continued to preserve a sort of empire over the men: respect for religious sentiments mingled itself with the habits of coquetry, and remorse was always either by the side of love, or following it very closely."

In support of the truth of this picture, and which a person of a true English mind must call a sad picture, and particularly of the last remark, we may refer the reader to the Memoirs of the Mistresses and Ladies of the Court of Versailles. The History of Madame de la Vallière is extremely interesting. Beaumelle gives a minute account of the paroxysms of remorse which this amiable woman continued to experience during the whole course of her connexion with the King; a connexion almost singular in the records of royal mistresses, being founded on the lady's impassioned attachment. It is to be doubted, however, whether her religion would ever have had force enough to break what it condemned: the ascendency of the less worthy Madame de Montespan compelled her, after sustaining a series of neglects and insults which cut her to the heart, to solicit the permission of the King to entomb in a cloister her penitence and her sorrows. It was of course granted, and her resolution having become generally known, she was visited in form on the occasion. The Duke de Beauvillier, who was at the head of the most religious party, exhorted her to give to the world a striking example by choosing an austere order. Others recommended her to select a convent where she might rise to dignities. Her reply to the latter was, that not having known how to conduct herself, she dared not pretend to conduct others. On the 19th April, 1764, she received the adieus of the court in the apartment of Madame de Montespan, her successor! She there supped: in the morning she attended the King's mass, he being present: after it was finished, she went directly to her carriage, which conveyed her to the Carmelites of the Rue St. Jacques, where, at the age of thirty, she was buried for ever. After the year of her novitiate, she made her profession on the 4th June, 1675, and assumed the name of the Sœur Louise de Miséricorde. Bossuet pronounced one of his finest discourses on this occasion, and the Queen and all the court were present at the ceremony. Madame de Montespan sometimes visited the recluse: "Is it true," said the favourite to her one day, "that you are as happy here as people say?"-"I am not happy," replied the Sour Louise, with a mournful smile; "but I am contented."

The reader will not fail to make his own reflections on a state of manners which reconciled and united so many circumstances, which in the real nature of things are utterly inconsistent the one with the other. The discarded mistress receiving the regular adieus of the court in the apartment of her successor; attending the mass as part of the ceremony of her retirement, where the King, and probably the Queen, as well as the new favourite, were present; all France occupied with the change, as if it had been of a famous minister; the most eminent preacher adding to the noise of the event by the thunders of his eloquence; and the Queen conferring dignity on the retreat of her husband's mistress by her presence at its consecration! Of Madame de Montespan, the successor of Madame de la Vallière, nothing more favourable can be said, than that she harnessed six fleas to a coach of filigree to amuse the King, and fed kids in painted boudoirs. What worse might be said of her does not belong to our present subject. The origin of the famous connexion between Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon will generally be regarded as more irregular than Madame de Genlis represents it; but that it was afterwards hallowed by marriage is scarcely doubtful. We must confess that we are inclined to lean almost entirely to the favourable views that are taken of this lady's character, and to treat what is said of her affectation and cunning as calumnies. She had the fault of being religious, which in France has perpetuated hatred against her up to this day. Her letters gave every evidence of a spirit, which, even in its mistakes, was really impressed with virtuous and pious feelings, and her influence was exerted in a manner that commands us to believe that conscience was its motive. Madame de Genlis quotes a remarkable note, sent to her by the Duke of Orleans, so notorious for his debaucheries, and who was generally supposed to be her enemy: "If I could tell you without hypocrisy," he says, "that I have become religious, I would have much pleasure in making you my confidant; for those who are really so, are at the same time so sincere and generous, that an honest man feels more inclined than another to grow devout." The Catholic faith attaching much importance to external austerities, that seriousness which Madame de Maintenon inspired in the King, coupled with the public misfortunes of his declining years, and the lamentable deaths of his children and grandchildren, threw an air of sadness over the court which had been once so gay-where Madame de Grignan, then Mademoiselle de Sevigné, had danced as Flora with the young King as a shepherd! The discontent excited by the change, gave an advantage to Ninon l'Enclos, the famous actress, who enlisted under the banners of gaiety and dissipation those of the courtiers, ladies as well as gentlemen, who were galled by the regularity of Versailles. She was said to have

opposed the Rue des Tournelles against St. Cyr; and her general doctrines may be gathered from her prayer, that "Heaven might grant her all the virtues of an honest man, and preserve her from all the qualities of an honest woman!"

The regency of the Duke of Orleans afforded a free and ample field to the practice of such sentiments. Barefaced voluptuousness, and gallantry stripped naked, were now the mode at court. Decency, far from being thought a duty, was not even respected as a heightener of pleasure. No one was ashamed, for no one was worse than another; and corruption, to blush at nothing, took the part of laughing at all. The variations of fortunes which attended the false financial schemes, producing unnatural riches and unnatural poverty, precipitated the degradation of manners. Extreme misery and extreme luxury have similar effects on the public morals; and rarely, it has been observed, has a nation experienced a great shock in its properties, without undergoing a change for the worse in its manners. Gallantry had till this moment at least pretended to the sentiment of love; but the pretence was now dropped, and the senses indulged themselves in a way as coarse as vicious. A new social character grew up amongst women in consequence of this change. Losing the most captivating distinction of their sex, they stood on a sort of common footing with the men. In consequence, as will always be the case under such circumstances, the two sexes made exchanges to the injury of both. The spirit of society annihilated all distinction of sex, age, talent, and character. The communications became universal, and in the general intimacy all particular attachments vanished. All the world was welcomed, and nobody cherished. Mademoiselle D'Espinasse joined her lovers in the most amicable communion; and Madame de Geoffrin received every body, and distinguished no one: "Elle jouoit le plus tendre intérêt avec trente personnes indifferentes."

Here we might stop. The influence of women on French literature is to be gathered from the manners which we have been describing; and in general their qualities, according to the fashion of the day, are to be found faithfully represented in the style of the contemporaneous productions. There is usually to be observed a strict correspondence between the two, and each doubtless had an effect on the other. The early part of the reign of Louis XVI was chiefly remarkable for the contrast between the easy habits, goodness, and simple tastes, which entered into the personal character of the King; and a general looseness and confusion of principles as well as practice, which showed that society was then utterly unhinged and deranged. To the state of manners sketched in the last paragraph the Re

volution quickly succeeded, and neither literature, women, nor any thing else, can now be considered as moving in orbits proper to themselves: a fearful meteor had rushed into the system, dispersed the various centres which governed its regular movements, and dashed the ordinary masses of society into fiery fragments, whirling around itself in its rapid and undefineable course. The women had not the Revolution in their own hands, as they had been accustomed to have, or to seem to have, the course of public events at some preceding eras; but still, according to the usage in France, they acted prominent parts on the public stage. The first army which the sovereign people marched against Versailles was chiefly composed of women; and it was a part of this force that chased the Queen naked from her bed. On the other hand, some of the most dramatic instances of heroism and affection, on the part of the victims of anarchy, were displayed by women. They pressed forward to accompany their husbands, fathers, brothers, and lovers, to the scaffold: they cried "Vive le Roi" to draw down the fury of the murderers on their heads: they made pointed and indignant apostrophes to their judges on their trials: gave precedence to age at the guillotine; and advanced to be tied to the plank with firm and graceful steps. It was a woman who planted a dagger in the heart of the monster Marat; and we have ourselves seen the mistress of Robespierre in a madhouse at Paris, where she still lives, having become deranged in consequence of the misfortunes of her lover, and the failure of his noble designs for mankind. Madame Manson, as we had occasion to notice in our last Number, declares that she felt herself ready, at ten years of age, to mount the scaffold with her parents; and we do not doubt either her resolution then, or the sincerity of her declaration at present. There are countries where, in the midst of similar public calamities, it is probable the women, speaking of their sex generally, would be more subdued by the horrors around them, and less capable of illustrating themselves as individuals by playing striking roles: are we to conclude that this difference would of itself be sufficient to prove them inferior to Frenchwomen in real powers of mind and genuine affections? The reader who, in the course of our recapitulation, has been struck by the ease with which French manners unite female devotion and intrigue, philosophy and coquetry, metaphysics and lovemaking; in short, all things that are naturally most opposite and inconsistent, will have probably already made up his opinion on this question. The principles of conduct in such a state of manners are often precisely the reverse of what they would be where the natural order and connexion of things have place;

and one cannot safely argue from action to motive but in what may be called an inverse line. Mr. Segur, a count and an academician, who has published several works of a light descriptive kind, and one very recently on the manners of his nation, relates an anecdote of the times of blood which will help us to a solution of the question above stated. He says, that, having occasion, during many days in succession, to attend the morning levee of one of the men then in power, he remarked the constant attendance of a very pretty woman, who, on inquiry, he found came to plead the cause of a husband, thrown into prison for some of the political offences of the period. It was winter, and the hour of ministerial reception was a very early one: at length becoming in some measure known to each other by their frequent meetings, he took occasion to pay the lady a compli ment on her assiduity and punctuality: "It is indeed very inconvenient for me, as you may judge, Sir," she replied; cannot well get home from one's visits of an evening before midnight; and to finish one's toilette so as to be here by seven, it is necessary to be up by five at the very latest."

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It is of the highest importance, in all questions that relate to what may be termed the style of a nation's thinking and feeling, to make sound distinctions, and to examine a little deeper than the surface. All the most useful and honourable qualities of English sentiment, and of the manners that there have their origin, are to be traced to the faculty and habit of so doing, which, as parts of the public character, should be sedulously guarded. A recent instance of female agency in France, exerted in a husband's cause, furnished occasion to some amongst ourselves to say, "See what exquisite models of domestic virtue were formed under the much calumniated influence of Buonaparte, and let the aspersers of French manners, as they relate to women, now blush over their slanders." The, fallacy of this argument it was not convenient for these persons to see; and of the singularly unfortunate nature of the example they were probably ignorant. Not to be misunderstood, however, we would observe, that notorious acts of zeal and devotion, which attract

general regard and admiration, are, in the proper nature of things, proofs of exalted character and intense passion: but much depends on time, place, and other circumstances; the shepherdesses of Arcadia are not to be confounded with those we see at a masquerade; the original in Sparta is not honoured by the parody at Paris. When a particular system of manners has destroyed all distinctive signs of feeling by jumbling all together; has turned life, as it were, out of doors, to let in shew and exhibition; has rendered men and women machines that take the impulse of their movements from without rather than