taste for music, and brought singers and operas from Italy. Until his time the royal orchestra was limited to violins; he brought into use various other instruments till then unknown in France. Dancing was also greatly cultivated, and the ballet, which assumed such magnificent proportions during Louis the Fourteenth's reign, became a principal entertainment in all the court festivities. In fine, he initiated all the luxury, splendour, and refinement which ultimately degenerated into the sybaritism that distinguished the second half of the seventeenth century. In the mean time he carefully excluded the young king from all State affairs, inclining him to frivolous and vicious pursuits, keeping from him all good books, and diverting his mind from all studies of an ennobling character, or which would instruct him in the art of government. In consequence of this training, the future Augustus grew up very ill-educated. La Porte, who was the king's personal attendant during his boyhood, has, in addition to this, brought an accusation against the cardinal too terrible to be repeated in these pages, the veracity of which is seemingly confirmed by the fact that, although banished on account of the assertion during Mazarin's lifetime, he was afterwards recalled and taken into favour, which would scarcely have come to pass had his story been false. After all, there must have been something truly great in Louis' nature that it could emerge so well from such a training. as being positively ugly, after a time usurped her place in the king's affections; and took a far firmer hold upon them than Olympia had ever possessed. She recip rocated his tenderness with an all-absorbing passion. Madame de Motteville relates that Mazarin actually entertained the idea of raising his niece to the throne. "I very much fear," he said to the queen one day, "that the king too greatly desires to espouse my niece." The queen, who knew her minister, comprehending that he desired what he feigned to fear, replied haughtily, "If the king were capable of such an indignity, I would put my second son at the head of the whole nation against the king and against you." it is said, that response of the queen, but he Mazarin [writes Voltaire] never pardoned, adopted the wise plan of thinking with her; he assumed honour and merit in opposing the passion of Louis the Fourteenth. His power had no need of a queen of the blood for its support; he feared even the character of his niece; and he believed that he strengthened the power of his ministry by avoiding the dangerous glory of elevating his house to too great a height. Mazarin now resolved to at once remove Marie from the court; upon his declaring this intention, and forbidding any further intercourse between her and the king, her grief and despair was so heart-rending that Louis offered to break off the marriage then negotiating with the Infanta, and make her his queen. How admirably the wily cardinal could act a Mazarin had married one niece to the noble and self-denying part, is manifest Prince de Conti, and a second to the Duc in the reply he made to this offer: "Havde Mercœur; two others, Marie and ing been chosen by the late king, your Olympia Mancini, were unmarried; these father, and since then by the queen, your the cardinal kept at court, and threw con- mother, to assist you by my councils, and stantly into the young monarch's society. having served you up to this moment with Madame de Motteville tells us, when Olym- inviolable fidelity, far be it from me to pia first arrived in France, she was re- misemploy the knowledge of your weakmarkably plain, but as she grew to woman-ness, which you have given me, and the hood a great improvement took place in authority in your dominions which you her personal appearance. He eyes were have bestowed upon me, and suffer you to always fine, but from being exceedingly do a thing so contrary to your dignity! I thin, she became plump; her colour was am the master of my niece, and would high, but delicate; her cheeks were dim-sooner stab her with my own hand than pled; her hands and feet small and exceedingly beautiful, and she possessed wit, talents, and grace. Such charms, thrown constantly in his way, could not fail to make some impression upon the heart of a boy of seventeen. They read, sat, talked, danced together, and Louis studied Italian for the express purpose of conversing with her in her own language. But the impression was not lasting; a rival, her own sister, Marie, who has been described elevate her by so great a treachery." In two of his letters he threatened the king with resigning his office, and quitting France forever, unless he relinquished all thoughts of his niece. There are historical writers who have held these heroic effusions to be the expression of his real sentiments, and have praised them accordingly; but such a judgment is in direct contradiction of the whole life of the man. He who could systematically endeavour to debase a boy's mind, and to unfit a young monarch for all the duties of good government, must have been wholly destitute of the nobility of character pretended to in that speech and those epistles. Besides which, the concluding gasconade about stabbing his niece with his own 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. poor it appears beside the Satanic grandeur of his predecessor! it is all mean and mediocre. "Eight years of absolute and tranquil power from his return until his death were marked by no establishment, either glorious or useful," remarks Voltaire. With all his cunning and subtlety, 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 calculations 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." 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. 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 Mazarin possessed one amiable virtue — through the cardinal. The queen-mother clemency. His whole career is unmarked was a mere cypher, who could obtain noth-by one vindictive or sanguinary act; never ing for herself or her adherents without had minister caused so little blood to flow his permission. A painful and fatal dis- by the axe, and never had minister enemies ease, however, was hurrying him fast to more numerous and bloodthirsty. This is the grave; anxious to conceal its ravages rare and unique praise for a man of that from strangers, when he received foreign age. But we must remember that the ministers he had his cheeks covered with Italians were at least a century in advance rouge. Death found him seated in his of the French in civilization. Let us not, chair, dressed in his full cardinal's robes, however, begrudge him this virtue, for he and his beard carefully trimmed, as if for had few others. 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 leading character in George Eliot's new 1661. story or not, rumour says that the first The character of Mazarin is fully pour-section is misleading in this respect, and trayed in the events of his life: how that we shall find the young lady to whose From The Spectator. GEORGE ELIOT'S HEROINES. WHETHER Gwendolen Harleth be the gressing conventional limits as the pres- self-will and selfishness so elaborate a self-will of a sort which must end in transstudy 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 studies of female character display, like her writings in general, a certain definiteness of bent, in which one characteristic is uppermost, and is painted with a distinctness of outline and clearness of touch which make the character containing it memorable. She is very fond of dwelling on the deep conventional vein in women, and has sometimes even made it attractive, though much oftener the reverse. In her last story there were two such characters, Celia and Rosamond, and though the latter was by far the deeper study of the two, and presented a picture of conventional sweetness, prettiness, selfishness, and superficiality, such as it will not be easy to find a companion for in the whole range of English literature, Celia's character was, at least, equally definitely drawn in its more amiable and natural conventionalism, and in proportion to the care and space given to it, the trait of conventionalism was quite equally prominent. Again, 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 The has indeed studied these limits carefully, and well knows how powerful they are. But she has as carefully prepared us in this character for a selfishness which should pass the limits of the conventional, and hurry on into flagrant evil, or even crime. as Miss Austen's of Lydia Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice," or Mrs. Elton in “Emma,” or even Emma herself, or Miss Crawford in "Mansfield Park;" or even such pictures as Sir Walter Scott's Di Vernon and Catharine Seyton? With men, it is true, George Eliot can deal somewhat more lightly. Mr. Brooke, for instance, and Mr. Cadwallader in "Middlemarch," and the admirable parish clerk, Mr. Macey, in "Silas Marner," and the rector and his son in the new tale of "Daniel Deronda," are touched off with comparative lightness of manner. Our author probably indulges more neutrality of feeling in relation to men than she does in relation to women. She does not regard them as beings whose duty it is to be very much in earnest, and who are almost contemptible or wicked if they are otherwise. And yet she handles even men more gravely than most novelists. She has more of the stress and assiduity of Richardson than of the ease of Fielding in her drawing. Nevertheless, there are many of her male creations - Fred Vincy, in "Middlemarch," is an excellent example- who have really but little earnestness in them, and yet who are not so consciously weighed in the balance and found wanting as the woman in the same condi tion. There is something of the large and grave statuesque style in all George Eliot's studies of women. She cannot bear to treat them with indifference. If they are not what she approves, she makes it painfully, emphatically evident. If they are, she dwells upon their earnestness and aspiration with an almost Puritanic moral intensity, which shows how eagerly she muses on her ideal of woman's life. It is quite true, we suppose, that many of the women of this great novelist will be the delights of English literature as long as the language endures. The spiritual beauty of Dinah, the childish and almost involuntary selfishness and love of ease which give a strange pathos to the tragic fate of Hetty, the vague ardour of Dorothea, the thin amiability, but thorough unlovableness, of Rosamond, all these, and many other feminine paintings by the same hand, will be historic pictures in our literature, if human foresight be worth anything, at least as long as Sir Walter Scott's studies of James, and Baby Charles, and Elizabeth, and Mary Stuart, and Leicester are regarded as historic pictures in this land. But George Eliot's heroines are certainly never likely to be remarkable for airiness of touch. It is not Sir Joshua Reynolds, but rather Vandyk, or even Rembrandt, among the portrait-painters whom she resembles. She is always in earnest about her women, and makes the reader in earnest too,- you cannot pass her characters by with mere amusement, as you can many of Shakespeare's and some of Scott's, and not a few of Miss Austen's. There is the Puritan intensity of feeling, the Miltonic weight of thought, in all George Eliot's drawings of women. If they are superficial in character and feeling, the superficiality is insisted on as a sort of crime. If they are not superficial, 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, From The Saturday Review. these poems have a distinctly Miltonic THE QUAKER'S HAT. weight both of didactic feeling and of the A VERY big book might be written on rhythm which comes of it. In "Arm- the part played by the hat in history. If gart," for example, there is all the Mil- the mad hatter of " Alice in Wonderland" tonic tone of feeling applied, in rhythm had undertaken to write a history of the often almost as Miltonic, to measure the world, he could have summed up the leadstandard of a woman's ambition and devo-ing epochs in the development of Eurotion. Thus her world of women, at all pean civilization under headings desigevents, 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 of women at least -as other writers equally great can. Where is there such a picture nated 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? 66 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 and their nay was nay," their customers the eager Francis de Sales forgot to put returned, until the complaint became on his head when he started upon his common in the north of England amongst preaching mission against the Calvinists. "envious professors, if we let these QuaWhat would one give to see the far more kers alone, they will take the trade of the important hat which George Fox first re- nation." fused to put off in the presence of the mag- The first occasion on which the Quaistrates and ministers of Cromwell's reign? ker's hat came publicly and officially into "Proud flesh," says George Fox, "looks trouble was at the Launceston Assizes in for hat-honour." The refusal to uncov- the year 1656, before no less a person than er the head before the magistrates, like Chief-Justice Glynn. "When we were many other parts of the Quaker ritual, brought into the court," says Fox, "we had been intermittently attempted by stood a pretty while with our hats on, and some of the earlier Puritans. "Saltmarsh all was quiet, and I was moved to say, was the first," says Dr. King, in his "Life' Peace be amongst you!''Why do you of John Locke," "that began to be scrupu- not put your hats off?' said the judge to lous about the hat." It appears, however, us. We said nothing. Put off your 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 a lord protector's person, and that he had |