Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/85

 9* s. m. JAN. 28, m] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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to our consternation, that the members of the eminently respectable and distinguished families in whose proceedings we are interested are almost more likely to relieve others of their purses than to be themselves so relieved. With some- thing not far removed from a shock we learn that the exercise of the whole family influence is required in order to preserve cousin this or that from the gallows, and that sometimes this, great as it is, is inadequate. Richard Hals and Frederick Turville, both of them connexions of the family through the Lady Verney who was the mother of the "Standard-bearer," earn what is here called "the crowning distinction of the gallows." Among the various letters con- taining family news sent by Edmund Verney at East Claydon to John Verney, the merchant at Aleppo, none can have conveyed intelligence much more tragical than one undated, but written, pre- sumably, about July, 1660: "Cosen Jack Temple, Sir R.'s brother, was tryed for having fourteen wives at once, and escaped the gallows. I think I have sufficiently spoken of marriages. Now for

hanging, which also goes by destiny My cosen,

Fredd Turville, was hanged at Hertford for burglary and other crimes. But I '11 speak no more of such ignominious ends, though these ensuing may be as deplorable ; for my cosen Thorn: Danby was basely murdered in a tavern in London by one Burrage ; Cosen Reade killed in France; cosen A. Temple, lieutenant in a ship of war, was slayne before Algiers." "Cosen" Frances Hobart speaks with much indulgence of the afore - mentioned "poor coussin Frederick Turville," and is glad to think that he died like a " very good christion" and self- proclaimedly " a chatolicke " (sic). A note received from this man, who had in his time, as a naval officer, done good service, is docketed by Sir Ralph Verney as from " Dick Halse, a Highwayman since hanged." A sad episode in the narrative is the madness with which, soon after her marriage to Edmund Verney, Mary Abell is visited. In spite of her affliction she survived all her descendants, and lived to the age of seventy-four. Her tomb- stone registers, witn some tautology, that "not- withstanding her lunacy she was a Woman of Extraordinary Goodness, Piety, & Devotion." Tom, the scapegrace, concerning whom much has been heard, died of old age at well over ninety, still possessed of 22s. and la. Sir Ralph, the mainstay, represents Buckingham in the "Convention" Par- liament from January, 1689, to February, 1690. Though prayed for by all his connexions and friends, including That sweet saint who stood by Russell's side,

he died at midnight between 25 and 26 September, 1696, leaving instructions, which were not followed, to be buried " as privately and with as little pomp as may be."

It will show what sidelights this volume throws upon history to state that we read how, on the day following the funeral, King William "was last Sunday at Whitehal Chapl, tis the first time since the Queen dyed, and I was told by one that was their he looked full of trouble and concern." Reproductions of portraits and illustrations gener- ally constitute once more a great attraction. Those from Claydon House include Queen Catherine of Braganza ; James Butler, first Duke of Ormond, by Egmont ; and paintings by Sir P. Lely of Sir Ralph Verney ; Anne Lee, Marchioness of Wharton ; Elizabeth Palmer, wife of John Verney ; and

Eleanor Lee, Countess of Abingdon. Six or eight further portraits of illustrious Verneys from the same and other collections are given.

Le Dix-huitieme Siede, les Mcnurs, les Arts, le Ideas: Recits et Tdmoignagts Contemporains. (Paris, Hachette & Cie.)

DELIGHTED at first to flout its predecessor, this nineteenth century, in the expiring years of which we live, has ended by yielding it something more than mere justice. Poetry in its highest development sank to rest in the middle of the seventeenth century, arid, though it stirred in its sleep at the sound of some melodies of Blake, did not rouse itself in earnest till it was stirred by the reveil of Burns, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Byron in England, and the heralding of Victor Hugo and the Romanticists in France. Then, even, we talked dis- paragingly of the eighteenth century, the century though it was of Voltaire and Beaumarchais, Diderot and the Encyclopaedists, and of Pope and Swift, Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds. It is through art we have at length reached admiration, or at least toleration, for the century of artificiality and prettiness, and we have condescended to believe that an age such as that of the boudoir and the reception room, of Versailles and the Trianon, the rapier, the snuff box, and the clouded cane, was a necessary portion of that progress which has made the nineteenth century what it is, and has left for the twentieth nothing of which we dare attempt to dream.

The handsome and superbly illustrated book before us a class of work in which the French are immeasurably our superiors is a history of the eighteenth century, not from its actions so much as from its products. The age, so to speak, tells its own tale. What are usually considered to be the bases of history records and documents properly so called are left unconsulted. From pictures and engravings, from furniture and decorations generally, from the works, the diaries, the conversations of writers, philosophers, statesmen, comedians, char- latans, chambermaids, a likeness of the age as it saw itself is drawn. From the treasures of the Louvre and the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Muse Carnavalet, Versailles, Cond6, Chantilly, the Opera, the Come'die Franchise, and from numerous private collections, writers each of them a specialist in his line have drawn illustrations ol the Court, the salons, Paris, and the pro- vinces, beaux-arts and the theatre, philosophers and intellectual development, statesmen and men of war. Little is told us concerning suppressed movements. We scarcely see the life of the tiller of the ground, know next to nothing of the grinding tyranny to which the labourer and the peasant were subjected, pay no more heed than did society itself to the grumbling of the coming storm. Life, however, in court, camp, forest, and park, in the boudoir, the alcove, the ruelle, the atelier, on the stage, is repro- duced for us as it is preserved in the pictures of Boucher, Watteau, Lancret, Greuze, and the illus- trations of Cochin, Eisen, Marillier, Moreau le Jeune. The frontispiece reproduces admirably a portrait by Madame Lebrun of Marie Antoinette, from the collection of the Marquis de Fontanges, which is succeeded, on the first page, by a delight- ful representation by Nattier of Madame Victoire, the daughter of Louis XV., as a nymph. These things are indicative of what follows in the open- ing section, ' La Cour.' Pictures of the Regent,