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and should be 1792. See Waagen's "Works of Art," vol. i., page 314. The following year I saw it myself in Pall Mall. The date of the execution of Charles I., at page 238, is a manifest lapse of the press, and

novelty of information can now be expected; and my purpose here is to mark the, I trust, too positive assertion of Mr. H. Grattan, in the recent volumethe fourth—of the biography of his illustrious father; where, at page 364, he broadly affirms, that Lady Edward Fitz-Gerald, the celebrated Pamela, was the daughter of the Duke, by Madame de Genlis. This is assuming public rumour for a granted fact; while the question tried before Lord Mansfield, and very distinctly reported by the reputed mother in her Memoirs, would apparently prove that Pamela was born of English parents, and named Syms, but engaged, when very young, by Madame de Genlis, as a companion to the Duke's children, in order to accustom them to speak English, as, with a similar view, they had Italian and German attendants for the acquisition of other languages. To this material evidence we may add the moral incredibility that the virtuous and most exemplary Duchess could have allowed their education by a double adulteress the defiler of her own bed; and my hope, supported by other sources of knowledge, with which I forbear encumbering the subject, is, that the impeachment is destitute of truth, while I am quite aware, that it has obtained general credit. The eventual fortunes, however, of Lady Edward may not be so generally known. After her husband's death, she retired to Hamburg, where she married Mr. Pitcairn, an American gentleman, from whom she was subsequently divorced, and in 1812 repaired to Paris, whence she proceeded for the advantage of a kindlier climate, to Montauban. While in the rural environs, she adopted the garb and assumed the crook of a shepherdess, in imitation of one of the tales by Marmontel-"La Bergére des Alpes;" but this wayward fancy yielded to the stirring movement of the late Revolution-the "glorious days" of 1830, when she returned to the capital, and there died, at the hôtel du Danube, rue de la Sourdière, in November of the following year. The religious ceremony was performed at the church of St. Roch, after which I witnessed the . funeral procession, but do not recollect that it was attended by the royal carriages, as I had seen at the obsequies of Madame de Genlis, six months before. All the expenses, however, of the interment were defrayed by the King; for the thoughtless Pamela, little submissive, in principle or practice, to the dictates of prudence-the creature of impulse more than the pupil of reason-though in the enjoyment of £500 income, was not found possessed of a shilling at her decease. Among the mourners on the occasion Talleyrand was remarked. Born in 1776 or 1777, she was then about fifty-five years old; but Lord Edward was fifteen years her senior. (See La Biographie Universelle.)

Mr. Grattan's volume would afford other materials of animadversion, such as the imputation of want of principle to Arthur O'Connor; but I shall

should be 1648-9, in place of 1641. And at page 257, where mention occurs of "a quarto volume, containing drawings in chalk, by Janet, of Francis I. and II. of France, their Family and Court," I suppose that, instead of Francis II., we should read Henry II., the son and successor of Francis I., and much more

confine myself to the passing correction of a different error. In the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1840, page 471, some instances were produced of the ungrammatical use of the pronoun whom in the accusative, when it evidently should be who, in the nominative case, a fault of which Mr. Grattan furnishes an additional example. He writes at page 263, "Yet these were Catholics, whom Lord Clare had stated in his place in Parliament, would never be attached to England, or loyal to a Protestant Prince." The translators of the Bible have been guilty of the same solecism, and so has Mr. Alison, as previously indicated, and whose name induces me to indulge in a few final observations.

This gentleman has now brought his elaborate undertaking to a termination, and secured to himself, by its brilliant execution, a high station in the first class of our historians. To pronounce it not unworthy of the mighty subject which it embraces, one of transcendant interest-unsurpassed in importance by any that has exercised human pen-is a concession of justice—– an impartial judgment-beyond which its accomplished author could not aspire, and to which he is eminently entitled. Having, however, while expressing a full concurrence in this general praise, on a few previous occasions, offered some corrective remarks, suggested by the incidental inaccuracy of names, or style, that appeared to have escaped him, I may now add, in conclusion, that, notwithstanding several passages of distinguished beauty in the last chapter of Mr. Alison's History, I cannot help considering it as rather misplaced in position and purpose-more like a moral discourse, or detached homily-comprising an extent equal to many of Mr. Colburn's ample-margined volumes, than the condensed retrospect, or spirited corollary, which should crown the eventful narrative, and educe, not arrest, elicit, not forestal, the reader's own reflections. Mr. Alison may recollect the censure of the Abbé de Mably on Gibbon, reported by the historian himself, (Life, p. 251, Milman's edition,) and not wholly misapplied in reference to the interruption of a flowing recital of facts by interposed reflections-a stricture to which Mr. Alison is much more liable, far, indeed, beyond all legitimate indulgence -"Demptis superfluis, crescit"-he should feel, and that, as light relieved from its excrescences shines the brighter, his history would gain in essence by the retrenchment. A glance at the admonitory chapters (iiid and xiith) of Longinus" Περί τοῦ ὑποκένου ὄγκον, (τμῆμα γ') and “Ότι ὁ Αυξήσεως Õрoç, K. 7X. (Tμŋμа iẞ”)—would be of no disservice, nor should his father's work on "Taste" be lost sight of. Quintillian's chapter the fourth, book the eighth-" De Amplifictione," might also be usefully consulted.

likely to be grouped with his father than overleaped, in order to bring into contact the grandfather and grandson. Besides, the latter had no family of children by his wife, Mary Stuart.

At page 258, I find introduced "Charlotte de la Trémouille, who defended Latham Castle, in 1664," which should be 1644. This lady reminds me of a misconception of Sir W. Scott, who, in his Peveril of the Peak, represents her as a Roman Catholic, which must be erroneous; for all her family, with possibly an occasional conformity, were Huguenots, and her father Claude de la Trémouille, was one of the chiefs appointed to regulate the conditions, on their part, together with the Duc de Bouillon, Duplessis Mornay, &c., of the edict of Nantes, in 1597. So we learn from Sully's Economies Royales, tome ii., p. 214. (Paris, 1664, folio.) He was created Duke of Thouars in 1595, after the conflict of Fontaine-Française, against the Duke of Mayenne, in which he had greatly distinguished himself, and when the royal life was in such peril, that, as Perefixe (page 187, ed. 1662,) says, "Dans les autres occasions, où le roy (Henry IV.,) s'estoit trouvé, il avoit combatu pour la victoire, mais qu'en celle-cy il avoit combatu pour la vie." The peerage was not registered till 1599. (Journal de Henri IV., tome ii., page 477.) Thus born, educated, and married into an eminently Protestant family, that she followed any other creed, unless authoritatively affirmed, which it is not, is little credible, and must be rejected; but the transformation enhanced the contrast of characters, and quickened the interest of the narrative-objects to which the immortal writer scrupled not to sacrifice historical fact.

The mention of Anne Marie Brudenell demanded, methinks, some reference to Pope's "wanton Shrewsbury," and Buckingham's infamous paramour. Other names of less notoriety are more illustrated.

ON MUSICAL COUNTERPOINT.

Cork, May, 1845.

MR. URBAN-Amidst the multitudinous contributions to your miscellany which, since its remote origin, have made it the repository of such varied riches, and conferred on it an enduring vitality that has triumphantly outlived the changeful revolutions of taste or fashion, so fatal in their influence to its numerous intervenient competitors, few, I believe, continued for an equal period to be more desired by your readers than the selections from Mr. Green's "Diary of a Lover of Literature." It was a cornucopia whence concurrently flowed the refreshing streams of entertainment, while it long enriched the columns of this Magazine, as an unfailing fund of diversified instruction. That a series, however, of desultory observations committed to paper for private use, even by an accomplished scholar, should offer occasional grounds of animadversion, was equally to be expected and pardoned. These notes were, in fact, the promiscuous fruit of studious leisure, embracing in its recreations the whole circle of literary culture, while unrestrained by any definite pursuit, or controlled by a dread of the press, which, several years after the writer's death, was made their public

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