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of Versailles, to the broad shadows and lurid atmosphere of an old Greek legend.

| branches as subordinate members of a great
French Empire. The king now announced
his intention of taking the field in person;
and Fleury's financial successors were severe-
ly tasked to provide for the due splendor
of the campaign. The Pretender was brought
from Rome; and, to the disgust of the Prot-
estant states of Germany, preparations were
set on foot for the Scotch expedition of 1745.
Again the eyes of the French ministers were
turned to Frederic of Prussia,-faithless as
they knew him, and publicly discredited by
his last desertion of their cause. It was re-
marked, that the Treaty of Breslau, by which
he held Silesia, was the only recent conven-
tion not ratified by the late Treaty of Worms,
between Maria Theresa and Charles Emmanu-
el of Savoy. On this occasion the French
ministers made their well-known choice of
Voltaire for ambassador to Berlin.
As a pro-
fessional diplomatist, his failure was of course
inevitable; but it is not clear that the choice
was absolutely unwise or fruitless. Voltaire's
enmity was never to be despised; and his ap-
pointment was an easy salve for the affront
he had just received in being rejected at the
Academy, through the influence of Maurepas.
On the other hand, if any conceivable bribe
could have induced Frederic to forget his
sole and paramount idea of self-aggradize-
ment, it would have been his public recogni-
tion as the royal patron of French literature
and infidelity. Voltaire, however, returned
from Berlin in six weeks; and could only re-
port at Versailles that Frederic made a dec-
laration of war by France against England
a necessary condition of his alliance. But
early in the next year, through another and

Her story is given at length in the commonest French Histories; still it is difficult for any one not familiarized with the brutal callousness of the cotemporary memoirs, to credit or conceive it in the fullness of its splendid infamy. Henry, Marquis de Nesle, the head of an ancient House whose honors dated from the Crusades, was the father of five daughters-all of them the mistresses of Louis XV.! Louise, the eldest, in whom observers loved afterward to trace something of the gentle-heartedness and humility which had often redeemed the parallel frailties of La Vallière, was married at the age of sixteen to her cousin, M. de Mailly, and placed as a lady in waiting at the court of Queen Maria Leckzinska. Selected by Cardinal Fleury to be the King's mistress, she bore her scandalous honors so meekly, as to retain her position for several years, without exciting envy or dislike. But she seems to have been an exception to the genius of her kindred. One of her sisters, the future Madame de Vintimille, had formed in her convent of Port Royal, the daring vision of governing France as Madame de Maintenon had governed it before her. The French annals afforded inexhaustible precedents for ambition of this kind; and after Fleury, as we said above, had stooped to arbitrate in these quarrels, which revolt us in the mere allusion, we find Agnes Sorel presented as the chosen model of Madame Chateauroux, the third daughter of this family. There is a terrible, Semiramis-like grandeur in what we read of her; treading public opinion under her audacious feet, negotiating on equal terms with the King, sweeping aside in her stately marcha more secret agent, the King of Prussia all the weaker, and at least less insolently guilty, appendages of the court. Incredible as it appears, it is certain that she demanded the public disgrace of her sister, Madame de Mailly, and her own recognized installation as Maitresse en titre. But it was her boast that she had not yielded to Louis, only to the King of France. She was bent on accompanying, like Madame de Montespan, her royal lover to the scenes of his victories; and on rousing into some show of energy the life which he had dragged on till the age of thirty-four, in aimless, tedious apathy.

The dissolving coalition soon felt her influence. A league with Spain had already been concluded at Fontainebleau in 1743, which was, in fact, an approach to the family compact of 1761. Providing ostensibly for the mutual guarantee of the Bourbon Houses, it in fact enrolled their younger

offered, by a descent on Bohemia, to divert the Austrians from the defence of the Low Countries. Chavigny was at once dispatched to the Diet on a mission similar to that of Belleisle in 1741, to represent the French cause as a guarantee of German liberty; and early in 1744, by a treaty known as the Union of Francfort, Prussia and Bavaria were again united with France against Austria.

The personal presence of a King of France never failed to swell the royal army with the strength of the provincial gentry, in addition to the courtly and official aristocracy. Escorting Madame de Chateauroux, Louis XV. set out at the head of a train as brilliant as that which had followed the great Condé in forcing the Rhine under the eyes of Louis XIV., or that more devoted noblesse which numbered no less than eight future Marshals of France, in supporting Villars at the des

perate struggle of Malplaquet. The fortresses on the Belgian frontier, which the Barrier Treaties authorized the Dutch to garrison, yielded to the advancing troops; when the news that Prince Charles of Lorraine had invaded Alsace, checked the King's progress, and concentrated all the forces then in France on the town of Metz. That wellknown illness of Louis XV. followed; and called out the last hearty enthusiasm France ever showed for her old Bourbon kings. The thrill of panic and sympathy which crowded the French churches and the very streets of Paris, with a throng as anxious for reports from Metz as their descendants were for the tremendous tidings of Jemappes or Waterloo, must have seemed to the next generation a singular instance of epidemic madness; and even to us, authentic and full as are the details that make up the picture, it has the look of some strange scene, erroneously transported into real history from a romance. While the King's danger lasted, Madame de Chateauroux fulfilled the severest duties, as she had most publicly usurped the privileges, of a Queen of France. But the imminence of a new reign combined all the waiters upon Providence with the graver circle, which, in sorrow and indignation at the abasement of royalty, had adhered to Maria Leckzinska and the Dauphin. The latter (father to Louis XVI.) had been studiously kept at a distance from the reveling and triumphant profligacies of the King's march. But he was now joined at Metz by the Duc de Chartres, grandson of the Regent, and son to the Jansenist Duke of Orleans. The same feeling of superstitious Catholicism which, while English emissaries were at this very time tampering with the Protestants of the South, prevented the restoration of the Edict of Nantes, would have been outraged, if Louis XV.'s death-bed had not been hallowed by public sacraments. But the expulsion of Madame de Chateauroux was a necessary condition of their administration. The Duc de Chartres and Richelieu drew their swords in the very bedchamber; meanwhile the horror which Louis XV. always showed at the approach of death, weakened the party of the favorite. She was ordered to leave the court; and d'Argenson, the foreign minister, prepared his own future disgrace by the unmanly harshness with which he delivered the royal orders. The King recovered; and Madame de Chateauroux was recalled. Her enemies were, in their turn, dismissed; d'Argenson was exiled, and laid down his office; she

was herself named to a high position in the Dauphin's household.

But the revulsion of her feelings had been too strong. She was taken ill with a suddenness that roused suspicions of poison; and in twenty-four hours she had died, imploring the pardon of Maria Leckzinska ! By her side, at the death-bed, reappeared Louise de Mailly, that true and loving sister, whose tenderness her own guilt could never harden, nor her rival's insults alienate.

With Madame de Chateauroux passed away the animating principle of the revived coalition. The year after her death the energy she had communicated to Louis XV. still carried him on to Fontenoy. But after that, the ends proposed by war seemed further off than ever; and were brought no nearer even by Roucoux and Lawfeldt. Early in 1745 the Emperor Charles VII. closed his wretched career. The first act of his successor, the Elector Maximilian, was to make peace with Austria, and to acquiesce in the elevation of Maria Theresa's husband, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, to the imperial throne. An attempt at an Italian confederation, of which the King of Sardinia would have been the most prominent member, and which would have largely recompensed France for her losses in the war, was broken off in the same year by the obstinate folly of the Spanish court. But in 1746 Philip V. died; and at once Elizabeth of Parma lost all her influence. The new king, Ferdinand VI., immediately recalled the Spanish troops, not choosing that they should be sacrificed in Italy to provide an appanage for his halfbrothers. Frederic again failed the French cause, and, in setting Austria free to act after the Peace of Dresden, verified the saying that he hurt his allies as much by making peace, as he hurt his enemies by making war. In India the quarrels of Dupleix and Labourdonnaye favored the English establishments, and consigned the latter great soldier and administrator to the Bastille. At sea, Anson's victories were destroying the French navy. Still France toiled on; and deserted and exhausted as she was, in 1747 she declared formal war with Holland. But the maritime powers and the House of Austria had yet another card to play, and by producing it decided this protracted game.

The position of Russia with regard to the older monarchies of Europe is one of the most curious features in the diplomatic history of the last century. Long before the reign of Peter the Great, in the days of the Livonian and Polish wars, her colossal power

When the one object of expelling Walpole was attained, the very pretence of any public interest had been so completely thrown aside, that the treaties of Aix la Chapelle never once made mention of the right of search, nor contained any provision for regulating the contraband trade-though these alone had been the assigned causes of the war. It was not till Sir Benjamin Keene's Convention of 1750 that the chance of future embarrassments was obviated, by the abrogation of their fruitful-and, we may well add, shameless-parent, the Assiento Contract of 1713.

had been propelled with convulsive move- | in the decision by which the court of France ments toward the South and West. Since was allowed to head the coalition of 1741. his death, in each of the three European wars that followed the peace of Utrecht-in the war of the Polish Succession, in that of the Austrian Succession, and in the Seven Years' War-Russia attempted to take part in the contest; she was, however, invariably and systematically excluded from a share in the final treaties which reunited the recognized members of the international commonwealth. Her assistance, indeed, was eagerly desired by all parties: but our ancestors regarded it with much the same jealousy and discredit which they would have attached to a league with the Turk against Christian powers, or with which an English government would have sought help from AbdelKader against France. It was not till the wars of the Bavarian Succession, in 1779, that Frederic the Great, sinning grievously against German interests, introduced Russian diplomatists as guarantees of the Peace of Teschen-treaties, renewing those of Westphalia, with the guarantee of which, Russia has in consequence considered herself chargIn the present instance, ever since the death of Charles VI., the French and English ambassadors at Petersburgh had been struggling against each other's influence. At last, through the help of the Grand Chancellor Bestufcheff, the latter prevailed; and agreeably to the Subsidy Treaties of 1747, 67,000 Russians were ready to act against France upon the Rhine. It would have been impossible for the latter power to resist the accession of strength which this contingent would have given to Maria Theresa. But the presence of these dangerous allies quick-ed to aims which were strictly practical, and ened, perhaps on both sides, the negotiations of Aix la Chapelle; and this tedious war finally closed in 1748, without the accomplishment of any one of the objects for which it had been begun.

ed.

England, indeed, lost little in this contest, except by the waste of troops and money, and from the discredit of having originally engaged in the Spanish War in obedience to an ignorant and interested clamor. Against our support of Maria Theresa nothing can be said. When no single continental court was found honest enough to refuse a share in the plunder of the House of Austria, England alone acted honorably up to her engagements. But the party which precipitated the original war with Spain is not therefore absolved from legitimate blame. It is impossible to doubt that our subsisting broil with that country was an important element

France was, if possible, still more entirely without excuse for her share in the struggle; and she never recovered the wounds she received in it. By the party which supported Belleisle in clamoring for war, the attack on Maria Theresa had been proclaimed the natural consummation of the policy of Henry IV. and Richelieu. But there was never a more signal instance of the short-sighted haste which is incapable of distinguishing between the letter of a principle and its spirit and application. When the House of Austria was threatening to crush the development of every weaker state in Christendom, and was supported by the whole force of spiritual despotism, Henry IV.'s resistance to its usurpations was the cause, not of France only, but of Europe. Farther on, if we except the advance of the French frontier and the extension of dynastic alliances, as reasonable objects for a wise ruler to pursue, the vaulting ambition of Louis XIV. tend

it was ratified by the enthusiastic applause of the whole nation. But, after the peace of Utrecht, the House of Austria had become forever incapable of giving serious offence; her richest provinces had been annexed to France, and the ties which bound up with them the inviolate unity of the Holy Roman Empire had been rudely broken. The Austrian finances were exhausted; the remnant of Eugene's heroic life was passed in struggles with Charles II.'s ambitious flatterers, and the solemn triflers of the Aulic Council; the various leagues and alliances of the Rhine had abased the head of the empire to be the president of a rebellious and disorganized confederacy; and with the empire, the national spirit of Germany, so formidable to France, and so much dreaded by her, had lost all its terrors. Without some extraordinary impulse to force them back upon

themselves and startle them into independent | action, it seemed as if the nations between the Rhine and the Vistula would scarcely require even a passing notice from the vigilant diplomacy of France. Frederic William of Prussia (though in many respects a most undoubted and honorable exception to his brother kings) was absorbed in his passion for playing at soldiers. Saxony was involved in the endless squabbles of the Polish Diet. Hanover, after plundering Mecklenburgh, under pretence of pacifying it, was quarreling with Prussia over the booty.

But to French statesmen the House of Austria continued to be the same bugbearas if Tilly and Wallenstein still headed her armies; as if the imperial race still drew strength from Alsace and Franche Comté; as if its younger branches still ruled in Spain, and the Sicilies, and Milan, and Peru. To weaken this vanishing phantom, France plunged madly into the war, the diplomatic character of which we have briefly traced. She was rewarded by the creation of a new kingdom, which was destined to take the lead in Germany; and which may even yet be found the fittest element to regenerate the fallen empire. Frederic owed Silesia and Glatz to the co-operation of France, and to her inability to cope with his great capacity. The appearance of another first-class power in the European lists; the strength which carried Prussia through her subsequent struggle with Austria; the intense enthusiasm of German nationality which hailed the triumphs of Minden and Rosbach; the self-relying vigor which this nationality has since communicated to German society and German literature; the movement of the whole German race in the War of Independence; the growth of that doctrinaire school of modern Germany, whose most rooted prejudice is an antipathy to the very name of France-all these effects have followed (and we believe may be deduced by no indirect

affiliation) from that unjust war of the Austrian Succession.

Internally the consequences to France were as deplorable, and far more immediately disastrous. The national expenditure,

which Fleury had succeeded in equalizing with the income, rose above it, never to be reduced. The royal navy, which, on the interruption of Fleury's conventions with Walpole, Maurepas had labored to revive, was so absolutely destroyed, that M. de Tocqueville assures us, at the peace* of Aix la Chapelle, France only possessed two ships of war! In the collisions between the French and English colonists were sown the seeds of the misunderstanding which, in the war of 1756, deprived France of Canada, and prepared the ruin of her flourishing establishments in Hindostan.

We have now sketched the two first of the three periods into which we divide the diplomatic history of France during the reign of Louis XV. The third period commences with the Peace of Aix la Chapelle, and the Austrian Alliance that followed. But the attitude which Europe then assumed was preserved, with some modifications, long after the death of Louis XV., and down to the Congress of Reichenbach, in 1790. It would be impossible for us (consistently with reasonable limits) now to give the events of these years, even in the merest outline. We can only hope that we may soon have an opportunity of doing so, by the appearance of a history of this later period, as candid and intelligent as M. de Tocqueville's "History of the Reign of Louis XV."

*The April supplement of the Revue des Deux Mondes contains a very able paper on the "French Marine of 1849;" and annexed to it is a table of the maritime armaments of France from 1675 to 1743; by which it appears that in 1717 (two years after the death of Louis XIV.) the maritime forces of

France only numbered four vessels and 460 men. There are considerable fluctuations. But in 1736 the vessels were only 5; the men 280.

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From Hogg's Instructor.

CONVERSATION.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

THE flight of our human hours, not really | more rapid at any one moment than another, yet oftentimes to our feelings seems more rapid, and this flight startles us like guilty things with a more affecting sense of its rapidity, when a distant church-clock strikes in the night-time, or when, upon some solemn summer evening, the sun's disk, after settling for a minute with farewell horizontal rays, suddenly drops out of sight. The record of our loss in such a case seems to us the first intimation of its possibility; as if we could not be made sensible that the hours were perishable until it is announced to us that already they have perished. We feel a perplexity of distress when that which seems to us the cruelest of injuries, a robbery committed upon our dearest possession by the conspiracy of the world outside, seems also as in part a robbery sanctioned by our own collusion. The world, and the customs of the world, never cease to levy taxes upon our time: that is true, and so far the blame is not ours; but the particular degree in which we suffer by this robbery depends much upon the weakness with which we ourselves become parties to the wrong, or the energy with which we resist it. Resisting or not, however, we are doomed to suffer a bitter pang as often as the irrecoverable flight of our time is brought home with keenness to our hearts. The spectacle of a lady floating over the sea in a boat, and waking suddenly from sleep to find her magnificent ropes of pearl-necklace, by some accident, detached at one end from its fastenings, the loose string hanging down into the water, and pearl after pearl slipping off for ever into the abyss, brings before us the sadness of the case. That particular pearl, which at the very moment is rolling off into the unsearchable deeps, carries its own separate reproach to the lady's heart. But it is more deeply re

proachful as the representative of so many others, uncounted pearls, that have already been swallowed up irrecoverably whilst she was yet sleeping, and of many besides that must follow, before any remedy can be applied to what we may call this jewelly hæmorrhage. A constant hæmorrhage of the same kind is wasting our jewelly hours. A day has perished from our brief calendar of days: and that we could endure; but this day is no more than the reiteration of many other days, days counted by thousands, that have perished to the same extent and by the same unhappy means, viz., the evil usages of the world made effectual and ratified by our own lacheté. Bitter is the upbraiding which we seem to hear from a secret monitor"My friend, you make very free with your days: pray, how many do you expect to have? What is your rental, as regards the total harvest of days which this life is likely to yield?" Let us consider. Threescore years and ten produce a total sum of 25,550 days; to say nothing of some seventeen or eighteen more that will be payable to you as a bonus on account of leap years. Now, out of this total, one-third must be deducted at a blow for a single item, viz., sleep. Next, on account of illness, of recreation, and the serious occupations spread over the surface of life, it will be little enough to deduct another third. Recollect also that twenty years will have gone from the earlier end of your life (viz., above 7000 days) before you can have attained any skill or system, or any definite purpose in the distribution of your time. Lastly, for that single item which, amongst the Roman armies, was indicated by the technical phrase "corpus curare," tendance on the animal necessities, viz., eating, drinking, washing, bathing and exercise, deduct the smallest allowance consistent with propriety, and, upon summing up all these

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