endeavour to debase a boy's mind, and to | poor it appears beside the Satanic granunfit a young monarch for all the duties of deur of his predecessor! it is all mean and good government, must have been wholly mediocre. "Eight years of absolute and destitute of the nobility of character pre- tranquil power from his return until his tended to in that speech and those epistles. death were marked by no establishment, Besides which, the concluding gasconade either glorious or useful," remarks Volabout stabbing his niece with his own taire. With all his cunning and subtlety, hand is so opposed to his cold and timid nature, that it would alone suffice to throw discredit upon the whole. It all meant what Voltaire says it did he found it wise to think with the queen.

Orders were given that Marie should be placed in the convent to which poor Olympia had been already consigned. With tearful eyes the young Louis conducted her with his own hand to the carriage which was to take her away. "You weep, and yet you might command," were her parting words.

his knowledge of human nature was very shallow. Judging from himself, he believed interest to be the ruling passion of all men, and seldom or never in his calcu lations made allowance for vanity, pride, self-love, and woman-love, which determine more than the half of human actions. Self-interest is the usual goal we propose upon starting, but we so often wander out of the straight road into enticing-looking bypaths, in the mazes of which we sometimes lose ourselves, and never find the way back. It is said that Mazarin comThere had been several brides proposed pleted Richelieu's work; truly he followed for the young monarch Henrietta of up the policy of his great predecessor as England, Marguerite of Savoy; but as far as his own dissimilar nature would both countries were desirous of cement- permit him; but the one was an oak that ing a peace, policy determined the Span- braved every tempest unflinchingly, the ish alliance, and at the end of February other a reed that bent before the storm, 1660, after several months of negotiations, and, when it was past, rose up straight the Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed, and supple as before. Richelieu was half which gave France Alsace, Roussillon, lion, half fox; Mazarin was all fox and no and a large part of Flanders. "Mazarin lion. Richelieu had given an impetus to his has one fault," remarked Don Louis de work that carried it resistlessly on to its Haro, the Spanish ambassador; "he suf-appointed end; he would have crushed fers his design to cheat to be constantly the Fronde in fewer weeks than it existed apparent."

Although Louis was now twenty-two years of age, Mazarin still held absolute power over the State; the king presided over his councils, but his was but the shadow of authority; and those who would obtain favours from him must solicit them through the cardinal. The queen-mother was a mere cypher, who could obtain nothing for herself or her adherents without his permission. A painful and fatal disease, however, was hurrying him fast to the grave; anxious to conceal its ravages from strangers, when he received foreign ministers he had his cheeks covered with rouge. Death found him seated in his chair, dressed in his full cardinal's robes, and his beard carefully trimmed, as if for a levée; he continued to sign despatches while his hand could grasp a pen; power passed away only with life. To the last he was consistent with his old hypocrisy; a few hours before his decease he sent a message to the Parlement, in which he declared that he died its very humble servant. The event took place on the 9th of March 1661.

The character of Mazarin is fully pourtrayed in the events of his life": "how

years, and but for what he had done it would have assumed proportions terrible as the League, but he had crippled the hands which would have made it so, and his mighty genius asserted itself even in the grave.

Mazarin possessed one amiable virtue — clemency. His whole career is unmarked by one vindictive or sanguinary act; never had minister caused so little blood to flow by the axe, and never had minister enemies more numerous and bloodthirsty. This is rare and unique praise for a man of that age. But we must remember that the Italians were at least a century in advance of the French in civilization. Let us not, however, begrudge him this virtue, for he had few others.

From The Spectator.

GEORGE ELIOT'S HEROINES. WHETHER Gwendolen Harleth be the leading character in George Eliot's new story or not, rumour says that the first section is misleading in this respect, and that we shall find the young lady to whose

self-will and selfishness so elaborate a self-will of a sort which must end in transgressing conventional limits as the pressure of life increases. It would be quite contrary to George Eliot's manner to lay so much stress on this as she has done, and then merge this feature of Gwendolen's character in conventional traits. We do not know a case in which George Eliot has carefully drawn a feminine character without an emphasis, without a stress, without a certain concentrativeness of manner which make it impossible to miss her purpose, or to doubt that that

study is devoted in the first section, a minor character on the whole, this seems to us certain, that if she be not meant to play a considerable part in the story, and to reap somewhat liberally the seed sown in early self-indulgence, there has been some little mistake made in making so careful a study of the character in germ. For clearly as yet it is in germ, and clearly, too, if it fades away into a character of ordinary selfishness, it will not be in keeping with the delineation already given. All her most brilliant stud-purpose is part and parcel of her sketch. ies of female character display, like her She has, of course, made many clever writings in general, a certain definiteness sketches of witty or humorous women like of bent, in which one characteristic is Mrs. Poyser, or Mrs. Cadwallader, and in uppermost, and is painted with a distinct- her degree, too, Nancy Lammeter, already ness of outline and clearness of touch referred to; but the lightness of touch which make the character containing it here applies rather to their sayings than memorable. She is very fond of dwelling to the portraiture of their characters, and on the deep conventional vein in women, if we were asked what Mrs. Cadwallader and has sometimes even made it attractive, or Mrs. Poyser would be in themselves, if though much oftener the reverse. In her the mother-wit which is the principal featlast story there were two such characters, ure in them could be conceived as dormant Celia and Rosamond, and though the latter for a time, we doubt if any reader, howwas by far the deeper study of the two, ever careful, could form a very distinct and presented a picture of conventional impression. So far as their liveliness or sweetness, prettiness, selfishness, and sagacity goes, it is a voice which somesuperficiality, such as it will not be easy to what conceals the real bent of the mind find a companion for in the whole range within. You see that in their case George of English literature, Celia's character Eliot was not giving us a lightly-touched was, at least, equally definitely drawn in character, - indeed, she has little interest its more amiable and natural convention- in women, unless she has enough interest alism, and in proportion to the care and either to sympathize with or dislike them, space given to it, the trait of convention--but rather diversifying her story by alism was quite equally prominent. Again, their vivacious sayings. We may take it in the admirable sketch of Nancy Lammeter, the heroine, if there be a heroine, in "Silas Marner," - George Eliot has given us the same vein of character, though there in connection with it a depth of inherited traditional prepossession and a warmth of womanly disinterestedness, which make it lovable, instead of even faintly unpleasing. On the other hand, in Romola, in Maggie of "The Mill on the Floss," and in the Dorothea of "Middlemarch," she has made a study of women the current of whose nature runs against this conventionalism, and whose life is in some degree a war with it, either in the moral or the intellectual region; and here, again, the depth and intensity of the purpose and point displayed already in the pose which was in the author's mind are initial sketch of her to render it possible, equally conspicuous. But if Gwendolen with any true regard to art, to shade the Harleth is meant to succumb to the con- character off into a new type of purely ventional limits imposed on selfishness by conventional selfishness. The stress laid social influence, George Eliot has certainly on her self-will and imperiousness has alstruck a wrong note at starting. The idea ready gone too far to admit of these qual of the character is indeed intellectual am-ities being confined within the limits which bition without originality, but it is moral social convention imposes. George Eliot

almost as a general rule, that when George Eliot paints a woman's character at all, she herself regards it with some very strongly marked feeling, and cannot, therefore, paint it with a light hand. The sketch of Celia is, perhaps, the nearest thing to the display of a light hand in her female characters, but she cannot at all conceal her profound though kindly contempt for Celia, and she brings it out here and there so as to produce on the reader something like the effect of a dissonance. Hence it seems to us that if Gwendolen Harleth is not going to be a very carefully elaborated study, she will be a flaw in the art of the story. There is too much pur

has indeed studied these limits carefully, as Miss Austen's of Lydia Bennet in and well knows how powerful they are. "Pride and Prejudice," or Mrs. Elton in But she has as carefully prepared us in "Emma," or even Emma herself, or Miss this character for a selfishness which Crawford in "Mansfield Park ; ' or even should pass the limits of the conventional, such pictures as Sir Walter Scott's Di and hurry on into flagrant evil, or even Vernon and Catharine Seyton? With crime. men, it is true, George Eliot can deal It is quite true, we suppose, that many somewhat more lightly. Mr. Brooke, for of the women of this great novelist will be instance, and Mr. Cadwallader in "Midthe delights of English literature as long dlemarch," and the admirable parish clerk, as the language endures. The spiritual Mr. Macey, in "Silas Marner," and the beauty of Dinah, the childish and almost rector and his son in the new tale of involuntary selfishness and love of ease" Daniel Deronda," are touched off with which give a strange pathos to the tragic comparative lightness of manner. Our fate of Hetty, the vague ardour of Doro- author probably indulges more neutrality thea, the thin amiability, but thorough of feeling in relation to men than she does unlovableness, of Rosamond, all these, in relation to women. She does not reand many other feminine paintings by the gard them as beings whose duty it is to be same hand, will be historic pictures in our very much in earnest, and who are almost literature, if human foresight be worth contemptible or wicked if they are otheranything, at least as long as Sir Walter wise. And yet she handles even men Scott's studies of James, and Baby Charles, more gravely than most novelists. She and Elizabeth, and Mary Stuart, and Lei- has more of the stress and assiduity of cester are regarded as historic pictures in Richardson than of the ease of Fielding this land. But George Eliot's heroines in her drawing. Nevertheless, there are are certainly never likely to be remarkable many of her male creations - Fred Vincy, for airiness of touch. It is not Sir Joshua in "Middlemarch," is an excellent examReynolds, but rather Vandyk, or even ple- who have really but little earnestRembrandt, among the portrait-painters ness in them, and yet who are not so conwhom she resembles. She is always in sciously weighed in the balance and found earnest about her women, and makes the wanting as the woman in the same condireader in earnest too,- you cannot pass tion. There is something of the large her characters by with mere amusement, and grave statuesque style in all George as you can many of Shakespeare's and Eliot's studies of women. She cannot some of Scott's, and not a few of Miss bear to treat them with indifference. If Austen's. There is the Puritan intensity they are not what she approves, she makes of feeling, the Miltonic weight of thought, it painfully, emphatically evident. If they in all George Eliot's drawings of women. are, she dwells upon their earnestness and If they are superficial in character and aspiration with an almost Puritanic moral feeling, the superficiality is insisted on as intensity, which shows how eagerly she a sort of crime. If they are not superfi- muses on her ideal of woman's life. cial, the depth is brought out with an energy that is sometimes almost painful. We have the same kind of exaltation of tone which Milton so dearly loved in most of George Eliot's poems; indeed, these poems have a distinctly Miltonic weight both of didactic feeling and of the rhythm which comes of it. In "Armgart," for example, there is all the Miltonic tone of feeling applied, in rhythm often almost as Miltonic, to measure the standard of a woman's ambition and devotion. Thus her world of women, at all events, is a world of larger stature than the average world we know; indeed, she can hardly sketch the shadows and phantoms by which so much of the real world is peopled, without impatience and scorn. She cannot laugh at the world women at least

of as other writers equally great can. Where is there such a picture

From The Saturday Review. THE QUAKER'S HAT. A VERY big book might be written on the part played by the hat in history. If the mad hatter of " Alice in Wonderland" had undertaken to write a history of the world, he could have summed up the leading epochs in the development of European civilization under headings designated by the prominent headpiece of each epoch. What better symbol for the old Greek epoch than the stephanos, for the old Roman epoch than the civic crown, for the Byzantine empire than the diadem, for the Middle Ages than the papal tiara, or for the revolution than the bonnet rouge?

and their nay was nay," their customers returned, until the complaint became common in the north of England amongst "envious professors, if we let these Quakers alone, they will take the trade of the nation."

The first occasion on which the Quaker's hat came publicly and officially into trouble was at the Launceston Assizes in the year 1656, before no less a person than Chief-Justice Glynn. "When we were brought into the court," says Fox, "we stood a pretty while with our hats on, and all was quiet, and I was moved to say, Peace be amongst you!' 'Why do you not put your hats off?' said the judge to us. We said nothing. 'Put off your

Perhaps no other human headpiece has | time some Friends that were tradesmen been the cause of so much stir in society could hardly get money enough to buy as the hat of George Fox, the founder of bread." But when it was discovered that Quakerism. We have seen the pilgrims the yea of these queer persons" was yea, at Thonon, in Savoy, kiss the hat which the eager Francis de Sales forgot to put on his head when he started upon his preaching mission against the Calvinists. What would one give to see the far more important hat which George Fox first refused to put off in the presence of the magistrates and ministers of Cromwell's reign? "Proud flesh," says George Fox, "looks for hat-honour." The refusal to uncover the head before the magistrates, like many other parts of the Quaker ritual, had been intermittently attempted by some of the earlier Puritans. "Saltmarsh was the first," says Dr. King, in his "Life of John Locke," "that began to be scrupulous about the hat." It appears, however, from Camden's Annals, that more than a hats,' said the judge again. Still we said century earlier Hachet and some of the nothing. Then said the judge, The first Marprelates refused, in Elizabeth's court commands you to put off your hats.'' reign, to take off their hats before the George Fox, with amazing simplicity, magistrates. That which was undefined asked for some Scriptural instances of and tentative for a few here and there any magistrate commanding prisoners to among the forerunners of Quakerism be- put off their hats. He next asked to be came a fixed and hard ritual for thousands shown, "either printed or written, any when it was adopted by the powerful mind law of England that did command such a of George Fox. He claimed a divine thing." Then the judge grew very angry, commandment for his apparent want of and said, "I do not carry my law-books respect and politeness. "When the Lord on my back." "But," said Fox, "tell me sent me forth into the world He forbade where it is printed in any statute-book, me to put off my hat to any, high or low. that I may read it." The chief-justice O the rage that was then in the priests, cried out "Prevaricator!" and ordered magistrates, professors, and people of all the Quakers to be taken away. When sorts! But the Lord shewed me that it they were brought before him again, the was an honour invented by men in the chief-justice asked Fox whether hats were fall and in the alienation from God, who mentioned at all in the Bible? "Yes," were offended if it were not given them, said the Quaker, "in the third of Daniel, and yet would be looked upon as saints." | where thou mayst read that the children His disciples accepted at once and with- were cast into the fiery furnace by Nebout hesitation the command to pay no uchadnezzar's command with their coats, "hat-honour" to their neighbours, and their hose, and their hats on!" Here were satisfied with the arguments pro- was a proof that even a heathen king alduced by their leader. Before they came lowed men to wear hats in his presence. into conflict with the higher powers upon "This plain instance stopped him," says this point they had to endure "blows, Fox. "So he cried again, 'Take them punches, and beatings for not putting off away, gaoler ; ' accordingly we were taken their hats to men," and often had their away, and thrust in among the thieves, hats violently plucked off and thrown where we were kept a great while." After away." Many a good Quaker, George nine weeks' imprisonment "for nothing but Fox tells us, lost a good hat through his about their hats," as the chief-justice told resolute obedience to this novel unsocial them, they were again brought before him, ritualism. Many Quaker tradesmen lost grimly wearing the offending head-gear. their customers at the first, for" the people" Take off their hats," said the judge to were shy of them, and would not trade the gaoler. "Which he did," says Fox, with them, when Friends could not put off" and gave them unto us; and we put them their hats, nor bow, nor use flattering on again. Then the judge began to make words in salutations, nor go into the fash- a great speech, how he represented the ions and customs of the world; so for al lord protector's person, and that he had

made him lord chief justice of England." | Quaker persecution, but it brought some The Quakers were incorrigible. They amelioration of their condition. The easywere sent back to prison, but not really so going Charles II., always personally tolermuch for the wearing of their hats as for ant, was much more amused than offendthe suspicion that they were royalist emis- ed when the Quakers refused to uncover saries affecting religious singularity in their heads in his presence. Not only order to win their way amongst the ex- upon Fox himself, but upon Hubberthorn, treme Puritans. Indeed a Major Seely Ellis Hooke, and several others, the king actually gave evidence-false enough made a very pleasing impression. In Dethat he had heard George Fox boast that cember 1660 Charles granted an interview he "could raise forty thousand men at an to Thomas Moore, of Hartswood, who had hour's warning, involve the nation in blood, been a justice of peace, in order to reand so bring in King Charles.” ceive a petition upon Quaker suffering. There was much debate amongst the courtiers, in the presence of the king, what they should do with this sturdy Quaker's hat. All agreed that he could not be called in with his hat on, and that he would never take it off himself. Some proposed that it might be removed gently by the clerk of the council. The king, the greatest gentleman of them all, declared that the hat should not be taken off at all, unless Thomas himself chose to remove it; no other should take it off. "When I saw the king at the head of the table with the rest of the council," says Moore, "I made a stop, not knowing but that I might give offence; when one of the council spoke to me and said, 'You may go up; it is the king's pleasure that you may come to him with your hat on."" His whole account of the interview shows that there was not a particle of rudeness or impertinent self-assertion in the sturdy Quaker. Six years later, when Adam Barfoot "came out of Huntingdonshire to warn the king," he met Charles at Whitehall, "betimes in the morning, going ahunting." Adam "stepped to the coachside," says Ellis Hooke, in a letter to Margaret Fell, "and laid his hand upon it, and said, King Charles, my message is this day unto thee, in the behalf of God's poor, afflicted, suffering people." When he came to the coach-side, the footman took off his hat; "but the king bid him give the man his hat again, and was very mild and moderate." Similar testimonies to the good-natured and gentle manner of Charles II. from men who were the very opposite of courtiers and cavaliers, occur frequently in the autobiographies and letters of the first generation of Quakers.

These first public prosecutions for the sake of the hat happened in 1656. In the following year John ap John was put in prison at Tenby for wearing his hat in the church. George Fox went to the mayor, justice, and governor of the prison, and asked them why the Quaker was imprisoned, while the Puritan minister was left in freedom; he had seen the minister "in the steeple-house, with two caps on his head, a black one and a white one, while John ap John had but one." The brims of the "priest's" hat were cut off; the brims of the Quaker's hat were left on "to defend him from the weather." Was the difference in brims cause enough for imprisonment?" These are frivolous things," said the governor. "Why then," replied the patriarch of the Quakers, "dost thou cast my friend into prison for frivolous things?" In the year 1658 many Friends were in trouble in London with Sir Henry Vane, "who, being chairman of committee, would not suffer Friends to come in, except they would put off their hats. Now, many of us having been imprisoned upon contempts (as they called them) for not putting off our hats, it was not a likely thing that Friends, who had suffered so long for it from others, should put off their hats for him.". Vane, however, did not make so much ado about it as the country justices or the high legal officers had done. After some slight word-conflict, he allowed these quaint irreconcilables to plead before him with covered heads.

George Fox speaks of the restoration of Charles II. as a judgment-day "upon that hypocritical generation of professors, who, being got into power, grew proud, haughty, and cruel beyond others, and persecuted the people of God" (his periphrasis for Quakers) "without pity. O the daily reproaches, revilings, and beatings we underwent amongst them, even in the highways, because we would not put off our hats to them!" The Restoration did not bring about a total cessation of

They were quite as determined to remain covered before Charles's Parliament as before Charles himself. In May 1661, Edward Burrough and two other Quakers were cited before a Parliamentary committee.

There were "some obstructions," says Burrough, "about our hats, which at last were taken off by one of them." A