are of the most exquisite, his wines of the most recherché, his furniture and equipages of the first style of finish, his servants are in the richest liveries. But then he is a vulgar-minded fellow at bottom, for he talks too much of all these things, and like all low people, has eternally a Duke or a Marquis's name oozing out at the corner of his ugly mouth. De la Garde is dying to see this fellow. They go and call on him. He pours on them the slaver of his fulsome flattery, and lets flow the sluices of his vulgarity. He prays the Cambrian and the Gaul-Griffiths-Julius Griffiths, and A. de la Garde, to do him the honour to dine that very day. The notice is short-wonderfully short-but there they will meet his very good friends, the hereditary princes of Bavaria-the Grand Duke of Baden, Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, K.C.B. K..H, K.T.S., &c. &c., several ambassadors and chargés d'affaires, and other persons of distinction of their acquaintance. Julius, the philosopher, and Adolphus, the epicurean, accept with alacrity: the repast is sumptuous, the wines exquisite, the coffee perfectly aromatic; but then, immediately after the liqueurs, whist and ecarté are introduced, and the guests crowd round a dry-looking mummy of an old man, tall and straight as a poplar, with a lively, fraudulent, beggar my neighbour sort of eye. This is Misther O'Bearn, (quære, O'Beirne) the most ancient and inveterate gambler in Europe, who tells them many queer stories of play, but not a man among them all is pigeoned or plucked, though Reilly and O'Beirne are plainly confederated for plunder. Reilly is, in fact, a regular leg, a Bath born knight of the green cloth, who has shaken the dice box, and chickenhazarded his way through every nook and cranny of this wicked world, where there was a shilling to stake, or a sixpence to gain. We have ourselves met a fellow of the name at Paris, as ignorant, as vain, and as vulgar, and who was under the strange hallucination that he could speak and write English. We thought him a leg or a spy. It may have been the same man. His vicissitudes were indeed strange. Three years after this, in 1821, he was in the capital of France, a beggar and an outcast.-His money, diamonds, carriages-horses-all are gone. He calls on De la Garde. I have exhausted every thing,' said he, but this bracelet; which contains my poor wife's hair. The bracelet would have followed every thing else to the pawnbroker's shop, if I could have raised a five-franc piece on it, but I cannot.' Good Mr. Reilly,' exclaims De la Garde, why not address those illustrious persons you regaled so magnificently at Vienna.''I have addressed them,' rejoins the gambler, but have received no reply.' Such, alas! is human life. Three years later, Reilly died of hunger in the public streets! Talleyrand's Toilette. 369 What are the Great ones of the Earth, who play for the higher stakes of empires and kingdoms,' doing all this while They eat, they drink, they sleep-what then? Why drink, and sleep, and eat again. The imperial table costs 50,000 florins a day, and the ordinary expenses amount to forty millions of francs. No wonder that Austria was obliged to tamper with her currency. There are 700 envoyés, from all parts of the world, now at Vienna, and they consume so much daily that the price of wood and provisions is raised, and there is an extra allowance given to the employés, who, like the jolly Irishman, had been spending half-a-crown out of. their sixpence a day! Our author's last interview with Talleyrand is at a breakfast on his birth-day. De la Garde arrives before the prince is up. At length the man of many changes emerges through the thick and closely-drawn bed-curtains. Enveloped in a muslin peignoir he submits his long head of hair to two coiffeurs, who succeed in giving it that flowing curl which we all remember, and which his well-known English imitator emulated in vain. Next comes the barber, who gallantly shaves away like smooth-chinned France of the olden time, and unlike hirsute stubble-bearded France of the present day, then comes the powder puff, then the washing of the hands and nails. Finally, there is the ablution of the feet, infinitely less agreeable to the olfactory nerves, as the lame leg of the prince requires to be dashed over with Bareges water, and that specific stinks in the nostrils of all human kind, being a distinctly compounded recognisable stench of burnt sulphur and rotten eggs. Perfumed and washed, the prince's cravat must now be tied; the first valet de chambre advances and arranges a most graceful knot. The remaining adjustment of habiliment is soon finished, and behold the halting diplomatist at his ease, with the modish air of a grand seigneur, and that perfect à plomb and usage, the result partly of early education, and chiefly of that long commerce with the celebrated men of all countries which he enjoyed alike from his birth, his social position, his talents, and the high offices which he filled in all the varying mutations of dynasties and governments. Meanwhile, the man of destiny with the gray frock-coat had been showing some signs of life. The congress were about to remove him from Elba to St. Helena, when all of a sudden he appeared at Cannes. From Cannes he hastens to Paris. His progress is an ovation. But Talleyrand is unabashed as undismayed. On the 13th of March he caused the adoption of the declaration, in virtue of which the great disturber of the peace of nations was put under the ban of Europe. On the 25th of March the alliance against France was renewed. The sittings of the congress lasted till the 10th of June, but the idle, the frivolous, and fashionable crowd hastened quickly away. The balls and concerts are now over-the bona robas are taking French leavethe fiddles are packed in their cases-the cogged dice are stowed carefully away the casseroles and stewpans are laid up in ordinary-the maitres d'hôtel are in movement, and the cooks secure their places in the Eilwagen, lest the broth at home should be spoiled. At such a season De la Garde's occupation is gone. He is the historian of dinners and dances and plays, not of treaties and protocols, but there is a time for all things and Horace tells himEdisti satis, lusisti, atque bibisti; Tempus tibi abire est. We have said the subject is a trifling, perhaps an ignoble, one; it is after all but whipped cream; but if there needs must be a chronicler of the trivialities of the congress, commend us to M. De la Garde, in whose volumes there may be found some amusement if not much instruction. It may be asked, do we rise from the perusal of these volumes impressed with the wisdom, gravity, and ability of the statesmen and ministers. Not a bit of it. With the exception of Talleyrand, Metternich, Castlereagh, Wellington, Humboldt, Hardenberg, and Gentz, there was not one among the crowd congregated at Vienna who could have made 1000l. a year at the bar (a sum we have never earned ourselves, though duller fellows triple the money), or 3001. a year in scribbling for newspapers or reviews. But then it may be asked if their social position and manner of life was not abundantly enviable and enjoyable? To this inquiry we briefly reply, in the words of an old French author, when speaking of the life of courts and congresses "Manger toujours fort tard, changer la nuit en jour, Fait voir en abregé comme on vit à la cour." There is a compensating truth in the couplets which atones for their ruggedness, and as the grapes are sour to us-as we are neither ambassador (not even ambassador at Madrid, though we at once possess and lack the Spanish), nor envoy, nor chargé d'affaires, nor simple attaché, we will hold to the comfortable and independent doctrine, that it is better to be our own master than slave. any man's ART. IV.-1. Dr. C. G. Steinbeck's Aufrichtiger Kalendermann, neu bearbeitet und vermehrt von CARL FRIEDRICH HEMPEL. In drei Theilen. Leipzig. 8vo. 2. Volks-Kalender der Deutschen, herausgegeben von F. W. GUBITZ. Berlin. 8vo. 3. Annuaire Historique pour l'Année 1843, publié par la Société de l'Histoire de France. Paris. 18mo. 4. Medii Evi Kalendarium; or, Dates, Charters, and Customs of the Middle Ages, with Calendars from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Centuries; and an alphabetical Digest of obsolete Names of Days, forming a Glossary of the Dates of the Middle Ages, with Tables and other aids for ascertaining Dates. By R. T. HAMPSON. 2 vols. London. 8vo. 'WASTE not time, it is the stuff of which life is made,' was the saying of a great philosopher who has concentrated the wisdom of volumes in these few brief but most expressive words. All ages, all nations, have felt the truth of this definition of time; and as if with a presentiment of this all-wise injunction, not to waste the precious stuff of which life is made, have ever busied themselves with an endeavour to discover the best method of accurately measuring it. It forms no part of our present intention to record these different attempts; to trace the various changes and corrections which increasing knowledge has introduced into the Calendar; or to show wherein consisted the superior accuracy of the Julian over the Alban or Latin Calendar; or how Gregory XIII., upon finding that by the introduction of the Bissextile days a difference of ten days had arisen between the Calendar and the actual time, caused them to be abated in the year 1582, by having the 11th of March called the 21st, thereby making it for that year to consist of twenty-one days only. As little need we dwell upon the fact that this new, or Gregorian style, as it was called out of respect to the Pope by whom it was introduced, was immediately adopted by all those countries of Europe which recognised the papal authority; while, on the other hand, those who then held the opinion, so prevalent even in our own days, that no good thing could come out of Rome, agreed in rejecting it so that it was only recognised by the Protestants of Germany in the year 1700, and by our own country in 1752. Sir Harris Nicolas, in that most useful little book, his Chronology of History,' has pointed out the fact, which is very little known, that an effort was made to reform the Calendar in this country as early as the reign of Queen Elizabeth-by the intro VOL. XXXII. NO. LXIV. 2 C duction of a bill, entitled- An act, giving Her Majesty authority to alter and new make a Calendar, according to the Calendar used in other countries,' which was read a first time in the House of Lords, on the 16th of March, (27 Eliz.) 1584-5. This measure having however failed, for reasons which do not appear, Lord Chesterfield is entitled to the credit of having overcome, in this matter, John Bull's deep-rooted prejudice against novelty, and the following passage from one of his letters furnishes a very characteristic picture of the difficulties he had to contend with, and of the manner in which he surmounted them. After stating why he had determined to attempt the reformation of the Calendar, he proceeds, "I consulted the best lawyers, and the most skilful astronomers, and we cooked up a bill for that purpose. But then my difficulty began: I was to bring in this bill, which was necessarily composed of law jargon and astronomical calculations, to both which I am an utter stranger. However, it was absolutely necessary to make the House of Lords think that I knew something of the matter; and also to make them believe that they knew something of it themselves, which they do not. For my own part I could just as soon have talked Celtic or Sclavonian to them as astronomy, and they would have understood me full as well, so I resolved to do better than speak to the purpose, and to please instead of informing them. I gave them, therefore, only an historical account of Calendars, from the Egyptian down to the Gregorian, amusing them now and then with little episodes; but I was particularly attentive to the choice of my words, to the harmony and roundness of my periods, to my elocution, to my action. This succeeded, and ever will succeed; they thought I informed, because I pleased them, and many of them said I had made the whole very clear to them, when God knows I had not even attempted it. Lord Macclesfield, who had the greatest share in forming the bill, and who is one of the greatest mathematicians and astronomers in Europe, spoke afterwards with infinite knowledge, and all the clearness that so intricate a matter would admit of; but as his words, his periods, and his utterance, were not near so good as mine, the preference was unanimously, though most unjustly, given to me. This will ever be the case; every numerous assembly is a mob, let the individuals who compose it be what they will. Mere reason and good sense is never to be talked to a mob: their passions, their sentiments, their senses, and their seeming interests, are alone to be applied to. Understanding they have collectively none; but they have ears and eyes, which must be flattered and seduced; and this can only be done by eloquence, tuneful periods, graceful action, and all the various parts of oratory." |